


Asphodel

by Sanctuaria



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, F/M, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Infinity Stone Soul World (Marvel), Natasha and Gamora in the Soul World, Natasha is Worthy, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Post-Canon Fix-It, Soul Stone (Marvel), Violent Rejection of Russo Canon, somewhat inspired by Stardew Valley, two assassins taking up farming, will they escape? yes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-17
Updated: 2021-01-16
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:00:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 36,851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23178856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sanctuaria/pseuds/Sanctuaria
Summary: Post-Endgame.After sacrificing herself on Vormir, Natasha wakes up in a strange world of perpetual orange twilight.Of course, she's not the only one stuck there.
Relationships: Clint Barton & Natasha Romanov, Gamora & Natasha Romanov, Gamora/Peter Quill
Comments: 231
Kudos: 147





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I have decided to add my own work to the legion of Endgame fix-it fics, because why not. If you've ever wanted a fic where Natasha and Gamora kinda retire and kinda take up farming and maybe escape, this is the fic for you.

Clint’s grip on her arm tightens, fingers indenting her very bone as they hang there, together. Her right arm is very near out of its socket entirely as she dangles from it, feet kicking out ineffectually into the open air from the last bit of survival instinct she hasn’t tamped down.

“Please,” he says, eyes full of pain and sorrow and desperation and everything she’s trying to save him from.

She squeezes his arm once, although at this angle it’s nothing more than a flutter of fingers against his wrist. Then she kicks off from the rock face, wrenching herself out of his grip and plummeting downwards.

She doesn’t feel it when she hits the ground.

* * *

Something cool ripples across her face. Natasha’s eyelids flit open, blinking, trying to make sense of what she’s seeing, why her eyes suddenly feel irritated and heavy. Orange. Lots of orange. Filtered through…water. She’s underwater. 

At that realization, she suddenly becomes aware of the liquid in her nose and lungs and her limbs flail outward. She kicks off a slippery, sandy bottom and shoots upwards toward the surface, breaking through it with a splash, although once she’s standing the water only comes up as far as her ribcage. Natasha breaks for the edge of the pool and clambers onto the dirt, spitting out a mouthful of water. As soon as her airway is clear, her gun is out and at the ready, although no threat appears. 

Also, the sky is orange. 

Vormir was purple, and this is orange. 

She scrambles to her feet and away from the copse of trees next to the pool to get a better look at it, craning her neck to look for any distinguishing markers in the sky. Earth has a moon. Vormir had a twin planet visible from its surface. Here, there’s nothing. Just that same muted orange color, palest straight upward, and more saturated towards each horizon. 

“Clint!” she calls. “ _CLINT_!”

Nothing answers but the wind, blowing past her through the wet locks of her hair that have escaped her braid. She turns in a circle, looking for any sign of life. Beyond the trees and the ankle-high grasses she’s standing on, there are none. The landscape continues much the same way in every direction, with occasional slopes and hills. It’s eerily silent, except for the wind and the grasses and the leaves of the trees, but that’s not the only thing that disquiets her. It takes another look around to put her finger on it, and another look up at the sky. It’s bright enough to be daylight, but there’s no sun. No shadows under the trees. She doesn’t have one either. 

Natasha holsters her gun, and unzips a small pocket in her tac suit where her Avengers emergency beacon resides, hoping the water hasn’t shorted it out. Tony claimed they were waterproof, but he probably didn’t account for a several thousand-meter drop before being dunked. She activates it with a press of her finger, then tucks it away again when it beeps. Somehow, she doesn’t think its signal will reach from all the way out here. Wherever _here_ is. 

The afterlife? She’s never been one to believe in such things, and even so, she dismisses the idea pretty much outright. She doesn’t _feel_ dead. What had the Red Skull said? An everlasting exchange. A soul for a soul. 

Yeah, that cleared things up.

Natasha looks around again, then picks up a set of rocks off the ground each the size of her fist. Grasping one like a tool, she scrapes it against the other, grinding a series of faint white lines into its surface that Clint will recognize, on the off chance he ever makes it here. Still, it makes her feel better to follow their protocol—if anyone can find her, it’s Clint.

If she doesn’t find her way back to him first. 

Positioning the rocks to indicate the random direction she’s headed, Natasha dusts off her hands and starts walking, eyes alert for any signs of life beyond the plants. The lack of sun is still unnerving her, a twisting, wriggling feeling in her gut, but she puts aside what that might mean for now. She counts her steps automatically in her head, so she knows it’s exactly three hundred and twelve—about an eighth of a mile—when she sees him, standing silhouetted against the orange horizon atop the next hill in front of her. 

She sprints forward immediately, tearing down the slope and across the field to get to him, only to stop and slow as another figure appears, and another. They are everywhere ahead of her, dotting the grass. Cautious, she approaches the closest—a woman, maybe thirty, that rings some faraway bell in Natasha’s brain but she couldn’t place if she tried. 

“Hello?” Natasha says, hand drifting near her gun again. As she gets closer, the woman’s figure begins to shimmer in the light, and the field beyond is visible through her form. Natasha stops five feet from her, but the woman gives no indication of recognizing her presence. “Can you hear me?” The woman scuffs the ground with her foot, then looks up at the sky before trudging away. “Hey, wait!” Natasha says, leaping forward and grabbing the woman’s arm. Her fingers pass right through her and close into a fist, and Natasha recoils in shock, watching the woman wander away. 

Her head turns toward the man at the top of the hill again, and a spike of adrenaline courses through her again. He can’t be here, and yet… The stocky shoulders, the archer’s build, the favoring of the right foot as if ready to sling an arrow. 

It has to be him.

She wants it to be him. 

“Clint!” she calls, but the wind snatches her voice away from her in the opposite direction. Natasha starts toward him, and as she gets closer a second figure becomes apparent, sitting in the grass about a foot away from him. She ignores the other figure as she ignores the ones she is running past, none of whose faces she recognizes. Her legs carry her swiftly to the top of the hill and she runs right at him, and passes right through him to the other side. Natasha stumbles but regains her footing quickly, her mouth open in a slight O of anguish that he’s like the woman, not able to see or hear or touch. She turns to face him again, and the O shifts into surprise and confusion. It’s not Clint. 

That’s all she has time to register before a green-and-black blur catapults in front of her, landing in a crouch with one leg tucked underneath her ready to spring and one leg extended outward toward Natasha. A long silver sword is gripped in one hand, and her skin is green. The woman hisses. “You don’t touch him!”

The sword whirls around and Natasha steps backward instinctively, its tip missing her midsection by inches. Not at all dissuaded, the woman—alien—bounds up from her crouch, leaping toward her amid a swirl of magenta hair. Dislodging one of the batons at her back, Natasha blocks the attack, barely, and is almost immediately met with another, a stab toward her ribcage that takes two batons and all of her strength to parry. Swiping one baton at the woman’s leg, Natasha feints with the other only to be rebuffed easily. The woman twists her sword around the base of her baton and her weapon falls to the ground, rolling away down the hill. Natasha drops the other one as well, as they are considerably shorter than the sword, and dodges numbly around the woman’s next strike to wind her legs around her neck, both of them falling forward as the woman executes a perfect inverted somersault to throw Natasha off down the hill. As she rolls, her hand goes for the gun in its holster, and she draws it at the same time as she throws an elbow out to stop her descent, jumping back to her feet. She aims and pulls the trigger. 

A crack rents the air. The woman’s leg slides backwards a few inches with the impact, but there’s no sign of blood—red or otherwise—visible against the black leather pants of her assailant. She keeps advancing, and Natasha fires another round at her other leg. It only slows her for a few seconds, and in response the woman throws her sword at Natasha. It arcs toward her, spinning horizontally through the air. Natasha dives right, but the woman seems to have anticipated that, and the hilt of the sword hits her ribcage with a _thunk_ that takes the wind out of her lungs and knocks her backward into the grass. She scrambles to pick it up but the woman is already there in a full sprint of inhuman swiftness, hair flying behind her and a savage look alight upon her face. She snatches the sword up and brings it back to swing at Natasha’s unprotected face. 

Something clicks in her head. “Gamora?” Natasha asks. 

The sword falters, then changes direction to hook the gun out of Natasha’s now-loose hand, sending it tumbling a few feet away. The tip of the sword returns to hover just above the hollow of Natasha’s throat, and the Black Widow does nothing to stop it, because she _finally_ has one part of this place figured out. “How do you know my name?” the woman demands. She looks back at the figure on the hill who has not reacted to the fighting except to wander a few paces away, hands in his pockets. “ _You do not touch him_ ,” she says again, dangerously. “Whatever new evil you seek with the stones—haven’t they done _enough_?” 

“I know your name because Nebula told me,” Natasha says clearly. Gamora doesn’t respond, just stares down at her with an ever-tightening grip on the sword’s hilt. “You look like her.” The woman's brow furrows slightly in confusion. “Well, not exactly—the hair and the skin color are completely different. But different in the same sort of way.” She chances a small smile. “Sorry, you’re only the fifth alien I’ve ever met.”

Gamora’s taut expression softens, just a bit. “Nebula…told you of me?”

“She said Thanos took you to Vormir, and killed you here. Until about an hour ago, I didn’t realize exactly what that looked like.”

The coldness returns to her voice. “And how did you end up here? My father would not have returned the stone to Vormir after his work was finished.”

“It’s a long story,” Natasha says. “But we’re trying to undo what he did. Undo the Snap.”

“Impossible,” Gamora says flatly, eyes devoid of emotion. 

“Not if we have the stones. That was the mission.” Natasha eyes the sword point. “Let me up?”

Gamora is still, considering, and then lifts the blade away from Natasha’s neck, allowing it to hang loosely at her side. Natasha stands, brushing the dirt off her uniform. She gestures at the man. “Is that…?”

Her voice takes on an odd quality. “Peter Quill. Star-Lord.” With a flick of her wrist, Gamora buries the first half foot of her sword in the dirt next to her, then falls down cross-legged beside it. 

“How…how long have you been here?” Natasha asks, although she thinks she knows the answer. 

“This place has no day. No night. No stars,” Gamora replies, not bothering to look up. “I only know I spent an eternity alone, and then _they_ showed up.”

“Those taken by the Snap,” Natasha murmurs.

“I was alone, and then I was not. When I found him, I was so…” She stopped, closing her eyes briefly. “And then I realized he could not hear or see me, and I could not touch him.”

“I’m sorry,” Natasha says, because it seems like the thing to say.

The woman looks up, black eyes flashing. “You have been condemned to the same fate. Do not patronize me.” 

“I’m not.” She looked around at the fields, the hills that seemed to go on forever. “But I’m not so sure we can’t escape.”

Gamora snorts. “What is your name?”

“Natasha. Natasha Romanoff.”

“Then you are a fool, Natasha Romanoff. There is no escape from this place.” She rises swiftly, grabbing her sword, and strides away. 

Natasha catches up in a few strides, though Gamora’s are longer than her own. “Wait. You’ve tried to escape?”

“Of course I have tried,” the woman growls. She stops, and Natasha realizes they have reached the specter of Peter Quill again, who is scuffing at the dirt with his boot. Gamora gives Natasha a look that would have sent most people running for cover, but the Black Widow stands firm. 

“Well, we should try again. I have…someone waiting for me on the outside. A team.” _A family_. 

“The only team I have is right here,” Gamora says with finality, turning away to face him again. 

“But he won’t stay,” Natasha whispers. “With the stones, they’re trying to undo the Snap. He won’t stay. He’ll…go back.”

For a moment, Gamora is still. Then her arm surges upward and the tip of her sword just millimeters from Natasha’s throat in a swirl of magenta hair. “LEAVE ME ALONE!” Gamora screams, and Natasha steps backwards, the unexpected slope beneath her feet almost sending her tumbling down the hill. Gamora breathes hard and fast, nostrils flared and eyes alit with fury. 

Natasha could fight, if she wanted to, but Gamora is her only ally in this place, and she’s been here much longer. There are still so many questions she needs answered if she’s ever going to make it out of here. “Okay,” Natasha says, palms splayed open at her sides. “Okay, I’ll leave you alone.” She’s mostly confident the woman won’t skewer her from behind, so she turns around and walks away. Three steps out, Natasha pauses. Her head twists back toward Gamora—not quite facing her, but not facing away either. “But…you should say goodbye. They won’t want to wait once they have the stones.” Then she keeps walking. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Snapped disappear, and Natasha and Gamora have another chat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for the response to the first chapter! Here's the second :)

She doesn’t go far enough away to lose track of Gamora, who is now a faint black blob on a hill a couple thousand feet to her right. Once away from the other woman, her attention returns to the ghostly figures surrounding her. Not all of them are human—a little more than half, by her rough count, with the others aliens of more types than she can name. Natasha doesn’t know how large this planet is, but it seems inconceivable that all the Snapped beings in the galaxy—universe—are wandering around here; they’re too sparsely populated for that to be the case. 

Natasha stops in her tracks as the back of her neck prickles. Her eyes rake over the landscape again, stopping on a small, familiar figure. A young woman, no more than a girl, really, holding a bow. 

Clint’s practice bow. 

Her legs are running before she even realizes she’s moving, and she skids to a stop in front of her. “Lila,” she says.

The girl doesn’t respond, of course—doesn’t even look at her, so Natasha walks around so that she can see her face. It’s strange, staring into a face she knows so intimately from having watched her grow up for twelve years, because her face betrays no emotion at her presence and makes no eye contact. 

She looks sad, Natasha thinks with a twist in her gut. Or…lost. Every single one of these people looks lost. But if they can’t see her, she doesn’t know what they’re seeing. They don’t form any sort of groups nor communicate with each other, so she assumes they can’t see each other either. An empty landscape? 

“Lila,” she says again, even though she knows the girl can’t hear her. “Clint will bring you home. He’s working on that, right now.” The girl stares some distance over Natasha’s shoulder, then lifts the bow in her hands, pulling back the string. She has no arrow, and after a few moments, lets it go again with a sense of quiet defeat. Her lips move in a whisper that is mostly inaudible above the gentle wind, if it is audible at all and Natasha’s mind isn’t just playing tricks on her. She looks around, trying to see if Laura or Cooper or little Nate are nearby, but no one is recognizable. 

Lila is alone.

“It’s all right,” she says to her. “I’ll stay with you.”

And she does, until _it_ happens. It reverberates across the landscape and rings in Natasha’s mind, a sound clear as a bell and definite in its power. The Snap. 

Lila fades away into dust. At first Natasha panics, because _not again_ , but then she realizes that if Lila is fading away from _here_ , wherever _here_ is, then she’s going home. Natasha looks around. They are all going home. 

Tears prick her eyes but she holds them at bay. This is what she jumped off that cliff for, after all. Why she’s been alone at the Avengers compound for five years, struggling to hold together a team that’s slipping apart like sand, even if Carol and Okoye and Rocket and Rhodey all humor her, all always accept her call. This is what she dreamed about during those miserable nights, missing Clint and Laura and the kids so hard it hurt to just be alive. She fought for this moment. She _died_ for this moment.

Assuming she is dead, which is seeming less and less likely the longer she spends in this place. There’s only one person who might be able to answer that question for her, and maybe now that the others have gone she might be willing to talk. At the very least, Natasha needs information. 

She heads back in Gamora’s direction, casting one last glance at where Lila had stood. She hopes Clint knows she’s back. He deserves that, despite whatever he might think. 

Gamora turns to her as she approaches, something akin to regret mixed in with the grief on her face. “I apologize. For before.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Natasha says. She glances over the empty landscape. “At least they’re back where they belong now. Alive.”

“Alive to face Thanos.”

“Thanos? He’s dead,” Natasha tells her. “We saw to that.”

Gamora shakes her head. “Do you not hear him?” Natasha frowns. “He calls my name. Listen.” 

“I…don’t hear anything,” Natasha says cautiously, because she is starting to doubt the woman’s frame of mind after being here so long. “We cut off his head. I was there. I saw it happen.”

Gamora just shakes her head again, clearly concentrating on something else, head tilted to face the wind. Natasha’s brow furrows but she goes back to listening again, despite that fact that the eerie silence of this world means that if there was anything to hear, she would have heard it by now. 

_“Natasha.”_ Her entire body stiffens at the sound of his voice, because it is unmistakably Clint saying her name. It is faint, drifting on the wind, and unfinished as if part of a bigger sentence that she can’t make out. 

“I don’t hear Thanos,” Natasha says slowly, physically loosening her taut muscles. “But I do hear Clint.”

“Who is Clint?”

“My partner. He…he and I were sent to Vormir to retrieve the Soul Stone. We didn’t know what it would require.” She swallows. “Well, maybe in the back of my mind, I had an inkling…no one else on our team could have done it, and we were the ones that were sent.”

“He sacrificed you to obtain the Stone. He pushed you over.” The disgust is clear in Gamora’s voice.

Natasha shakes her head. “I jumped. We both thought we should be the one. He fought me, but I won.” 

Gamora considers her, then nods once. “That is a better way to go.”

Natasha taps her fingers against her hip, thinking. “Thanos sacrificed you to get the Stone. Clint sacrificed me. Do you hear anyone else?”

“No.”

“Then that’s the connection. When they talk about us, we can hear them.”

“Then you agree: Thanos lives.”

“It’s not possible. Unless…” Realization washed over her in a cold chill. “Where was Thanos in August 2014?”

Gamora lifted a singular eyebrow. “Translation to galaxy standard time?”

“Hell if I know. When Quill was originally getting the Power Stone from Morag.”

“Morag.”

“Yes.”

“No, that’s where we were. Morag. Thanos dispatched us to Ronan’s ship to aid him in retrieving the Power Stone. It was on Morag, but Peter got to it first.”

“That’s how Thanos is alive, then. After the Snap, Thanos destroyed the stones. In order to get everyone back, we had to go back in time.” She ticks it off on her fingers. “Tony, Steve, and Scott went to 2012 New York for the Space, Time, and Mind Stones. Thor and Rocket went to Asgard in 2014 for the Reality Stone. Nebula and Rhodey went to 2014 Morag for the Power Stone, and Clint and I went to Vormir. He must have found out, and…followed us through somehow.”

“Then they will still face him.”

“But we have the Stones this time.” Natasha kicks at the dirt and grasses beneath her feet. “I hate being useless.”

“If half the universe’s population does not appear again, at least we’ll know they succeeded,” Gamora states. “But not at what cost.”

“Not at what cost,” she agrees, thinking of Clint. “So: we escape.”

“Impossible,” Gamora repeats. “I’ve tried.”

“I’m going to try again,” Natasha says, trying not to make it sound like she’s dismissing the other woman’s experience. She just…she has to do this for herself. “But I need to know the rules of this world first. I shot you before, but it didn’t even slow you down. Is that a… _you_ thing, or…?”

Gamora bends down, pulling up her pant leg to reveal a dark hole in her calf, straight through the bone. It is strange-looking, and not just due to the woman’s green skin—no blood is visible. “There is no pain. The mark will fade eventually, as all marks do.”

“So we can’t be hurt,” Natasha says. “That’s good, I guess. And dying?” The alien lifts her sword to her own throat before Natasha can stop her, but the long silver blade wavers as if seen through water and passes cleanly through it.

“I did nothing for days, hoping I would fade away,” Gamora tells her, voice devoid of emotion. “Even the will to die will not allow us escape from this place.”

“All right, so we can’t die. Can we eat? Drink?”

“Are you hungry?” Gamora questions.

“No…and I’ve been here for at least a day. Or it seems like it.” Natasha frowns, trying to remember. All her normal tells as a spy are useless here—the position of sun, hunger, thirst, sleep deprivation.

“I have not eaten since I arrived.”

“What if we tried, though?” Natasha spots a bush dotted with black berries and walks over to it, plucking one and rolling it between her forefinger and thumb.

“What purpose would that serve?”

She shrugs. “It’s not like it’ll hurt me if it’s poisonous.” Somewhere in the back of her mind, Ivan is scolding Natalia for her recklessness, but she pops the berry in her mouth anyway, feeling it puncture between her teeth and flood her mouth with juices. “It’s sweet,” she says, before tossing Gamora one as well. The woman’s face is impassive as she chews, swallows.

“I do not see the point,” Gamora says.

Natasha ignores that, too intent upon finding out the other rules of this place, her—their—prison. For now. “Still. I want to see the rest of this world, look for signs of civilization, or—”

“There is nothing. I have walked all the way around it, and it is all the same.”

Natasha blinks. “You…walked…all the way around the world?”

“Space works differently,” Gamora says, and Natasha doesn’t think she means _outer_ space, because she knows exactly what Tony Stark would have to say about that. “Go. You’ll see.”

“Okay,” Natasha says. “I don’t suppose you want to come with?” Gamora gives no response to that, so she looks around instead. “Any suggestions on a direction?”

“I went in a straight line, in the direction of that hill,” the alien points. “I will wait for you here.”

“Thank you,” Natasha replies. She checks her weapons out of habit, though they will do no good on this world and nothing can hurt her anyway, as far as they know. Then she starts off in a direction perpendicular to the one Gamora had indicated, as they might as well explore as much of this world as they can and it’s no use retracing each other’s steps.

The dirt is soft beneath her boots, the tall grasses tickling her knees through her pants. As before, one hill is followed by another, with sparse copses of trees and small oases of water dotted here and there, like the one in which Natasha had awoken. It occurs to her as she crests the fourth hill that it is odd, walking here, feeling no pleasant burn developing within her muscles and no quickening of her breath, no matter how fast she travels or how steadily she climbs uphill. The wind breezes past and plays with her hair but lacks a cooling sensation—the air around her is neither warm nor cold, just such a constant room temperature such that Natasha would question its very existence if not for her ability to feel its movement across her face.

Losing track of time happens more quickly than she’d like to admit, as Gamora predicted. She traverses ten hills or fifty, walks for an hour or a day—the sky remains the same burnt orange, the land the same shadowless plain. And she begins to see the futility of this plan, to understand the faraway look ever-present in the Guardian’s eyes.

They are insignificant on this world, two small specks in a universe that has moved on without them.

She catches snatches of her name on the wind, and it’s a comfort, a lifeline still tethering her from _here_ to _there_. It’s always Clint, and her jaw clenches at the idea that he’s probably informing Laura and the kids about what happened, but it also gives her hope that they have actually survived, that Thanos is finished and they are finally safe.

It is an indeterminate amount of time later that she spots Gamora again, a faint dot on the orange horizon, and the sight stirs something sorrowful in her chest. She was right, then—there is nothing for them here except an endless place to wander, their own personal Fields of Asphodel. What was the point, then, a soul for a soul? Just a test for the power-seeking demanded by an uncaring universe with no consideration for those being bartered away.

Gamora hefts her sword out of the dirt at her approach, something softer in her eyes than when Natasha had left. “So you saw then,” she says.

Natasha nods. “There’s nothing. No way out, no way off.” Her eyes close slightly. “No one else.”

“You understand then.” Gamora gestures with her sword. “That this is it. Forever. _An everlasting exchange_.”

Her lungs sweep in a deep breath, forcing herself to say the words. “We’re trapped.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! I would love to know what you thought :)


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Natasha and Gamora find a way to make life in the Soul World a little more livable.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey all! I've finally got the rest of this plotted and planned out, and I am so excited to share the rest of it with you guys; it's going to be quite a ride. You can plan on there being at least ten chapters, probably more like twelve or fifteen (knowing me, make that twenty). 
> 
> Also, if you're concerned about the rating no longer being General Audiences, I upped it only because I decided to use the f-word in Chapter 4 ;)

“No,” Natasha says suddenly, sitting up from the ground. “ _No_.” The woman beside her doesn’t even bother answering, just raises one silver-threaded eyebrow ridge. “I don’t accept that,” Natasha clarifies, pushing herself to her feet. “I don’t accept that it’s just—over.” She’s aware of the irony; she’s accepted this exact thing at several points in her life—staring down Hawkeye’s arrow, for one, and jumping to her supposed death of Vormir for another—but now, for some reason, she refuses to.

“Do you need to take another walk around the planet?” Gamora asks, tone somewhere between exhausted and mocking.

“All right, so we can’t escape,” Natasha says. “But we’re not _dead_.”

“Yes. Thus our unfortunate circumstance.”

“So we don’t act dead,” she says, staring down at Gamora. “We live. Here. On this world. Vormir, or…”

“This is _not_ Vormir.”

“Fine. This…’soul world,’ since we’re incorporeal anyway. We can live here.”

Gamora looks up at her, unimpressed with what Natasha is selling. “Obviously.”

“Actually _live_. Not just sit and wait for time to pass.” Something dark crosses the alien’s face and Natasha backtracks. “Not that what you were doing before I got here was _wrong_ , but…”

“Live and do what?” Gamora asks. “We cannot affect the rest of the universe. We do not even know what is going on, whether Thanos has won or our teams have triumphed.”

“No, we can’t affect them,” she agrees. “But we can do things for ourselves. Things that aren’t life and death—make decisions where the fate of the universe doesn’t hang in the balance.” Natasha stops, swallowing. “I could use some of those, after the years I’ve just had.” A new thought occurs to her. “Isn’t that…isn’t that what you would do with Quill, if he was here?”

Gamora’s mouth clenches, her lips forming a hardened line. Then she relaxes slightly, looking at Natasha with new purpose. “You are saying…eternity will pass faster, if we give ourselves something to do.”

“Exactly.”

“What do you have in mind?”

* * *

The alien’s sword whistles through the air before the _thwack_ of the metal embedding itself in the tree trunk. Natasha watches as Gamora grasps the hilt with both hands, tugging it free from the wood, then twirls it in one palm with a deadly grace before whipping it at the tree again, the sword sliding in a bit further than before.

Looking back down at her own work, Natasha clasps the five-inch knife usually strapped to her outer thigh and reaches for another cluster of reeds. She hooks the blade around them and presses inward, cutting them off near the roots, then arranges them further away from the pond and its copse of trees to dry. Natasha puts rocks of varying sizes on top of the reeds so that they will not blow away in the faint wind, then goes back for more.

When she gets bored of this, she and Gamora trade places, the woman handing over her sword with a reluctance that Natasha recognizes in herself, and Gamora cuts the reeds to dry while Natasha makes swings at the next tree. She has no delusion that her hacking blows are anywhere near as graceful as the alien’s, for whom the thin silver sword seems to be an extension of her arm, but Natasha makes do with short, broad strokes using both hands for the required power. Even so, her cuts are much shallower than Gamora’s thanks to their vast differences in strength, but it only takes Natasha a dozen more strokes to fell the tree, slipping out of the way as it crashes to the ground.

“Timber,” she says to no one in particular, because she doubts either of them can be killed by being brained by a tree more than anything else on this world. By the time the rest of this small grove is chopped down, her hands smart with where the metal hilt of the sword cuts into them as it impacts the wood, trying to rip itself from her grasp at the sudden resistance every time, and she gladly returns the weapon to Gamora. They’ve made good progress, not that there is any time limit, nor any time at all—fourteen fallen trees and a collection of reeds spread out for several meters in every direction.

Then they crouch near each other as they begin the task of shearing off the branches of the trees, Natasha selecting a more serrated knife from her boot. “Do you need one?” she asks Gamora, offering an extra.

The woman shakes her head, withdrawing a small cylinder from her belt. A ruby—or some other red stone—is set in the middle of it, and when Gamora presses it, twin blades pop out of either end, each no longer than the length of her hand. The blade evokes something sad, almost wistful in Gamora’s countenance, but she kneels next to the tree trunk and begins to hack away at the branches. Natasha does the same, both of them laboring in silence, though closer than before.

“That’s a beautiful blade,” Natasha ventures when they move on to the next trunk.

Gamora’s voice is dark but steady. “Thanos gifted it to me the same day he killed my mother, along with half the beings of my home planet, and took me as his own.”

Natasha swallows—whatever sad history she had sensed behind the weapon, that far exceeded her expectations. “My parents burned in a house fire when I was very small so that I could be taken and trained as a weapon for my country. I don’t really remember them at all.”

The alien’s eyes meet hers over the log for a long moment, and then she dips her head. “I have few memories of my home planet and my life there before he came, but those I do have are overlayed with my memories of the genocide.”

She is quiet for a minute. “At least he’s dead, then.”

“You assume.”

“I say we assume until the Snapped show back up here that they succeeded, or we’ll kill ourselves with not knowing,” Natasha says.

Gamora stills, then resumes cutting branches with her double-sided knife. “Agreed.” They work in silence for another few minutes, enough time to finish the fourth log and move on to a fifth. “Did you also kill those responsible for your training?”

“They’re dead,” Natasha nods. “Mostly not by my hand, but I can live with that. A few years ago, they tried starting up the program again—I dissuaded them from the notion.”

A small smile graces Gamora’s face. “I’m sure you did.”

When all the logs are clear of branches—if not entirely smooth-sided—Natasha and Gamora sit back to look at their handiwork. Then they walk to the place they had chosen to build upon, a flat section of land in between the hills that is not too far from the pool in which Natasha and Gamora had woken up on arrival. Bending down, Natasha begins pulling up the grasses to clear it by the fistful, but Gamora stops her with a touch of her hand on her shoulder—the touch of another being already seems strange after so long, but certainly not unwelcome—and withdraws her blade. The alien crouches, ducking as low to the ground as her formidable flexibility will allow, then swings the sword in a wide arc around her. Grass stalks fall in a golden wave around her as they are sliced away, and Natasha is once again impressed by the sheer sharpness of her weapon, undoubtedly made of a metal superior to any found on Earth so as to allow for such a keen edge with no sacrifice to durability in the form of nicks or dents. Gamora moves a few feet away to a new patch of grasses and does the same thing, while Natasha collects the stalks from where they fell. In only a few more strokes, the entire section on which they wish to build their house is clear.

“Well, that’s one way to efficiently mow a lawn,” Natasha jokes, reaching up to wipe her brow before she remembers she does not sweat here.

“I do not understand,” Gamora says, sheathing the sword and looking back at her, head tilted slightly. 

Apparently universal translators as Carol had described them on one of her brief visits to Earth had their limits. “Oh, on Earth people keep these patches of grass in front of their houses for aesthetic purposes…I don’t know why, really, but they’re a nice dick-measuring tool for suburban moms.”

“…I see,” Gamora said.

Natasha shrugged. “Not important. Help me haul these trees over?” They carry them one at a time, Natasha taking one end and Gamora the other, although Natasha realizes midway through the task that not only is Gamora doing most of the heavy lifting—literally—she probably could carry one of the logs from the middle with no help from Natasha at all. But the alien does not mention it, and soon they have the entire stack ready and waiting. “I don’t suppose you’ve ever studied construction,” she says.

“It was not a skill for an assassin, and thus not valued by Thanos.”

“Yeah. Same.” Natasha purses her lips, thinking. “I feel like we should build a small trench to stick the bottom logs into. I have this image in my mind of our entire house just rolling away.”

Gamora smiles, a small quirk of her lips, and acquiesces. They have no shovel so they put use their hands in the dirt, scooping out the outline of the simple house they had decided upon until the trench is as wide as the log’s diameter and half as deep. Then, working together, they roll the log into place, where it falls in the trench. After doing the same on the opposite side, they carve gouges into the upward-facing side of the log at each end and matching gouges into two more logs and lower the two new logs on top of the entrenched ones, lining up the gouges to lock together. Natasha kicks it with her boot, and the round log does not budge. “Not bad,” she says to Gamora, looking out at the square outline of their house that now lays in the dirt. “I think this might actually work.”

* * *

Progress is slow-going, but somehow Natasha doesn’t mind. They have eternity here, after all, and keeping busy—doing something with her hands—is good for not dwelling on that. Gamora hears no more of Thanos, and the times Natasha hears Clint gradually stop making her drop everything and still for a moment and instead just bring a small smile to her face. She tries to channel him, because, really, this whole house-construction-thing was always more his thing than hers, and tries to remember what she can about all those house repairs she watched him do, sitting a ways away with Laura, sipping lemonade and rocking Lila and reading to Cooper.

As the walls slowly rise from the ground, thick and sturdy, Natasha thinks Clint would be proud of her.

Well, at least until the roof collapses.

“Watch out!” Natasha calls as all of their support beams go crashing inwards towards where Gamora is standing, looking up at her. Neither of them can be hurt but it is forgotten in the heat of the moment—Gamora leaps backward out the empty space where the ‘door’ will eventually be, arms held protectively above her head. The log Natasha is perched on wobbles—“SHIT”—and then begins to fall as well, sending her tumbling to the earthy floor. She lands flat on her back with a _thump,_ staring up at the burnt orange sky, dust and the reeds they were trying to thatch with floating down around her.

“Are you all right?” Gamora asks, ducking through the fallen beams to get to her.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine,” Natasha says, pushing herself up from the ground. A smile is bold on her face, and she cannot help but laugh, standing in the wreckage of their house, and before long both of them are laughing, Gamora’s a high, clear sound that Natasha has never heard before. Afterwards, though, when they both have caught their breath, the smile slips from Gamora’s face, and Natasha doesn’t have to guess to know what she is feeling. Gamora walks outside and Natasha lets her, watching as the alien moves swiftly away, wiping something from her face, trying to come to terms with what Natasha is also: that alone, without the people they love, they can be happy here. That it is all right, with no other choice, to move on.

Natasha herself isn’t quite sure she believes it. But, with every log they put up, with every addition that makes the outline of their house clearer, she gets a little closer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! All thoughts and theories welcome :)
> 
> Also, if you are a master construction person, do not blame me for any fallacies in this chapter - all my knowledge of building comes from playing with Lincoln Logs as a kid and a brief Google search about roof thatching.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Natasha and Gamora make a discovery.

“I love this room,” Gamora murmurs, running her her fingers along the uneven wall. It is no longer just a bunch of logs stacked on top of one another, but packed with a dried clay-like mud to keep out the wind. Above their heads, the roof is finally stable, thatched with the reeds they had collected.

“I know,” Natasha tells her. “It’s why we agreed not to put any windows in it.”

“It has been so long since I have seen darkness,” Gamora says. She laughs slightly. “It doesn’t sound like the kind of thing you’d miss, until you’re stuck in a world of perpetual daylight…”

“I enjoy it too,” she admits. “In here, we can almost forget where we are…the color of the sky…”

Gamora smiles at her, barely visible by the light peeking past the curtain in the doorway, and Natasha smiles back. One house, a cookfire, several pieces of furniture, and the beginnings of a farm later, she is completely comfortable around the woman, something that cannot be said for all but a select few in Natasha’s old life.

“When you’re done admiring the darkness,” Natasha says, “I could use your opinion outside.” She pushes past the curtain—lighter, thinner reeds strung together in a sheet, and the alien’s idea—and makes sure it falls back into place behind her so that as little light as possible can slip through. That room is the bedroom—singular, because as she and Gamora had discovered while building, the fewer interior rooms they tried to make, the less likely the house would fall apart around them. The room Natasha steps into now is the living-slash-dining-slash-everything-else room, with a roughly hewn table with perpetually uneven legs and two chairs. There is no bathroom, as despite eating and drinking whatever they feel like they still don’t seem to need one, but the pond a few paces away serves as a good way to wash off the dust and grime of building and farming. Or just a convenient place to go wading in general, really.

Outside is the cookfire, walled in a circle of stones with the ground cleared of anything flammable—even if they have an eternity to do it, Natasha still doesn’t fancy the idea of rebuilding their house after accidentally burning it down—with a thin slab of metal that used to be part of her bullet-proofed jacket suspended on top of it to serve as their skillet. There are no animals here to cook—not even bugs, making it a little confusing how the plants grow—but Gamora is used to space food and Natasha grew up eating whatever she could get at the Red Room, so neither of them mind too much. To the side of their house is the farm Gamora has started: just those black berries Natasha found and some sort of edible tuber they stumbled upon for now, but Natasha goes out every day in a different direction to see what else she can find. The seeds to some sort of greenish-yellow squash that tastes somewhat like zucchini are drying on the table inside.

“You needed my opinion?” Gamora asks, exiting the house to join Natasha through yet another reed-door.

“Yeah,” Natasha says, picking up a sack—made from one of their washed undershirts; she can’t remember whose—from the ground near the cookfire. She pulls out a purple lump from inside and tosses it to Gamora. “Are _these_ worth growing, do you think?” Gamora tries it, sinking her teeth into the fruit’s thick skin, and chews. Her lips curl in disgust. “It looked like a plum, so I got excited, but I’m down to just chuck these if you don’t like them either.”

“Chuck them,” Gamora agrees, spitting the rest out and grinding it into the dirt under her boot.

“Gladly.” Natasha smiles, withdrawing something else from the sack. “Now, to cleanse your palate…try this.”

Gamora eyes the red, conical berry covered in tiny seeds with suspicion. “It’s good?” She takes a tentative bite.

“It looks and tastes exactly like a strawberry that we have on Earth,” Natasha tells her. “Like, scarily like it.”

“It is good,” Gamora agrees, eating the rest of it. “Who’s to say it’s not a strawberry?”

“Because…” Natasha can’t think of a reason. Nothing in this place seems like it really has a _reason_ to exist. “But still. I ate like five of them, and they all tasted _exactly_ the same. That’s strange.” Gamora raises an eyebrow ridge. “You know, like when you have a bunch of fruit and some of them taste better than others? Good ones and bad ones and just-okay ones? These strawberries don’t do that. They all taste exactly the same. Exactly like I remember a strawberry tasting.”

“Perhaps it is belief then.”

“Belief?”

“You believe a strawberry will taste thus. And in this world, it does.”

“I…” Natasha stops. “I _know_ it doesn’t make sense for strawberries to exist here, or for them to all taste the same. But I _believe_ that when I ate this fruit, it should taste like strawberry.”

“It would also explain why only a small fraction of the Snapped appeared here, and why half of them were Terran,” Gamora continues. “Only ones we knew of, or had met, at some point in our lives. Ones we _believed_ would be here. This is the power of the Soul Stone. Knowledge lives in the mind; _belief_ lives in the soul.”

“That’s…” Natasha stops herself before she could say _crazy_ , because who is she to say what was crazy, or wasn’t, here? “Then if we believe it should exist here. It will?”

“It would be an interesting theory to test,” Gamora concedes, “but nearly impossible. Belief is not so easy to manipulate as knowledge.”

“Damn it,” Natasha smiles. “I _believe_ the Soul Would should have hamburgers.” She pretends to look around.

“I believe it should have _zdinga_ bears.” She catches Natasha’s eye. “They are good hunting. And delicious.”

“Books. Television. I never will get to see that last _Star Wars_ movie now.”

“Oh, yes—working electronics,” Gamora agrees. “Maybe a space ship.”

Nothing appears. Natasha sighs. “Well, it was worth a try. Want to help me de-seed some strawberries?”

* * *

An unknown amount of time later—an initially annoying feature of the Soul World but one that turns out less bothersome than expected—their farm is fully functional and about as big as she and Gamora can manage it, carrying water from the pond that never seems to empty and watering the plants every morning after they get up. Then it is whatever project takes their fancy that day, whether it is searching for new fruits to diversify or trying to make their grass-filled mattress less poky and scratchy at night or sparring hand-to-hand, knife-to-knife, or sword-to-wood-stick. In the late afternoons they harvest the night’s dinner together, sautéing or stewing it on their little cookfire, and the evenings are spent simply carving little animals or ships out of their excess wood, as Gamora has taken to doing, or dyeing the planks with berry juice in a feeble imitation of art, as Natasha has. The nights are still and silent and however long they want them to be in the quiet, enclosed space of their bedroom, where they drift in and out of consciousness—such as ‘sleep’ is in this world—or else whisper softly over the mattress. It all comes easier in the dark—talking, sharing, speaking of the horrors of their lives—and brings them closer when they emerge into the perpetual daylight. Natasha talks about Clint and Laura and Gamora about Quill and the rest of the Guardians. In response, she shares stories about working remotely with Rocket and Nebula over the last five years, as Gamora has never met any of the people Natasha loves.

“I feel like I know them,” Gamora whispers to her one night. “All of them. I am sorry I ever thought Clint would be capable of throwing you over that cliff.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Natasha tells her. “I wish I’d spent more time in person with Nebula, gotten to know her a bit better.”

“You would have had much in common,” Gamora agrees.

Some mornings—the good mornings, and Natasha would say optimistically that more than of their mornings now are good, good as can be expected—she wakes with her arms around Gamora’s waist, or the alien’s around hers, and they spend the time braiding each other’s hair. Natasha’s is a side braid, her hair finally fully growing out the poor decision that was the platinum blonde until not even the tips of it remain. Gamora’s expert fingers remind her of Melina doing that braid when she was small and undercover, not yet a Widow but dreaming of being one. Gamora’s is more complete, bundling all of her magenta-black hair into an elaborate braid that cascades over one shoulder in one of the only Zehoberei styles she remembers from her mother. They laugh, they cry—most of all, they are free, in a way that neither has been since their childhood was ripped away from them, free to do whatever they want, whenever they want, with no fear of hurting others or of the responsibilities weighing upon them.

Today is not a good day.

“What the _fuck_ is that?” Gamora stops next to her, equally stunned, and Natasha is glad that they chose to go out looking for something called a ‘yaro root’ together today. In front of them is a swirling mass of black sludge, descending deep into the ground like a whirlpool. It is four or five feet across, sandwiched between two hills in a direction from their house that Natasha supposes that somehow they have never traveled before.

“Some sort of pit,” Gamora says, taking a cautious step forward. She draws her sword, extending it outward over the edge of the blackness. The tip dips inward, as if it is being sucked in, and Natasha and Gamora both take an instinctive step back. “It is a black pit to the center of this world,” Gamora breathes.

Natasha frowns, but doesn’t argue her assessment, as she’s learned by now that Gamora is to be trusted when it comes to weird space science-magic. “Do you think it’s an exit?” Natasha asks, letting herself believe it to be possible for a moment, however fleeting. Clint. Laura. The kids. Tony, Steve, all the Avengers…

“If it is… If I had known…” Gamora says, eyes closing.“I could have stopped Thanos the first time.”

“You couldn’t have known,” Natasha reminds her, immediately attempting to stop the other woman from spiraling as she does occasionally when Quill or Thanos are involved.

“I could. If I had been less distracted. If I had not given up searching this place so soon after my arrival—”

“Stop,” Natasha tells her softly, and Gamora does, though the regret remains clear in her eyes. “We don’t know if it’s an exit. It doesn’t make sense if it is one. _An everlasting exchange_ …”

“ _A soul for a soul_ ,” the alien finishes. The Red Skull’s gravelly, grating voice haunts both their dreams.

“You found the Soul Stone map for Thanos. Have you ever heard of a sacrifice coming back, afterward?”

“Never,” Gamora says. “But sacrifices were not common, even over the millennia. Many sought the Soul Stone, but few located it on Vormir, and fewer still succeeded in making it their own. I presume that Thanos was not the first, but no histories I have ever read have spoken of them.”

“All right,” Natasha says, thinking it through. “Thanos can’t have been the first; I like that assumption. He’s not _that_ special.” Gamora dips her head appreciatively. “But, there’s no one else here but us. And we can’t die, as you demonstrated, whether by injury or willing ourselves out of existence. So where did they go?”

“The other sacrifices,” Gamora says, toying with the words. She sheathes her sword, shuffling forward and staring down at the pit. “This is death. The final exit.”

“It’s the only thing that makes sense.” Natasha swallows. A cold chill creeps over her neck, tingling her shoulder blades. “Gamora…” The other woman is stock still, toes just at the edge of it. “Please don’t.”

The alien lifts her head, magenta hair flowing slightly in the breeze where it has come out of the braid. “I will not.”

Natasha breathes a sigh of relief. “Okay. Good.”

“And you?”

“…No.” She steps closer to Gamora, placing her hand on her arm. “We don’t need to kill ourselves we have each other. Not when life—even this life—is still worth living.”

Black eyes met gray-green ones. “Agreed.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoyed! :) Next chapter things really get moving.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An old friend comes to visit, bringing the possibility of freedom.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> New chapter! You can thank/blame DopeyTheDwarf for the extra bit of angst in this one :)

“ _Natasha_.” The word floats along the wind, not even startling her at this point, just igniting a warm glow deep in her chest, colored by a pinch of sadness.

“Clint?” Gamora asks, because she’s spent enough time with Natasha to know that look by now.

“Yeah,” Natasha says, and smiles. “He seemed happy.” Happy Clints are few and far between, though most of the time she can’t distinguish his tone from just the one word. She imagines that he was talking to Lila or Cooper or Nate just then, regaling them with some story from their STRIKE Team Delta days—the time Nick Fury threatened her with a cat, maybe, or the time she’d had to save him from accidentally getting his head stuck in a toilet. She imagines he’s doing the dishes as he tells them, Nate scraping the excess food off into the trash, Cooper washing, Lila drying, Laura listening in from the living room while reading a book with a small, warm smile on her face…

“That’s good,” Gamora tells her.

“And you?” Natasha asks, resting in the happy memories from the Farmhouse for just a moment more before they faded from her grip. Ever since they first discovered it, the pit weighs heavily on her mind now. She had thought she was happy before, or as happy as could be reasonably expected trapped on a world without access to Clint or anyone else, but now it taunts her in the darker moments.

_Are you happy, Natasha? Happy enough to do this forever?_

_Are you happy?_

_Are you happy?_

“You haven’t heard _him_ recently, right?” she continues, covering her lapse and cursing the pit again for all its worth. She had made peace with her lot before it appeared, bringing up questions Natasha didn’t want to know the answers to.

“No. All is silent.” Gamora appears equally pleased about that fact as Natasha had been when she first asked it. She sets a little wooden figurine down in front of her, one she has been casually hiding from her as she carved it for the last few days. Natasha examines it curiously. A bird? No, a hawk. Her eyes widen.

“Gamora—”

“I don’t know if it’s quite right—I’ve never seen a hawk before—”

“It’s perfect,” Natasha tells her, cradling the carving. Even the feathers have been smoothly whittled into existence by Gamora’s blade. “Thank you.”

“I was thinking you could paint it,” the alien says. “If we have the right colors.”

“Hmm, hawks are usually brown,” Natasha says, thinking it over. “So it wouldn’t need much. But a lighter underbelly…maybe some red on its tail if it’s a red-tailed hawk…”

“Or purple,” Gamora says, with one suggestive lift of her eyebrow-ridge. Her cybernetic enhancements glint silver.

“Or purple,” Natasha agrees. She meets her eyes. “Thank you.” She laughs a little, setting the bird down on the table. “And it’s funny, because I’ve been painting—well—this.” She flips over the wooden slab she’s been working on when Gamora was absent, handing it over. The blues and oranges of the Benatar are stark against the wood grain, or as best Natasha can remember it from memory given that she’s only flown in it twice, once over five years ago and once to Vormir, a trip she doesn’t care to dwell on.

_“It’s a long way from Budapest.” Had Clint known? Had she known? Had either of them had some inkling of what they were about to face? Somewhere, in her heart of hearts, had she known—_

Natasha shut down that line of thought with an unsteady breath, focusing instead on the alien across the table from her. “It’s not finished, I know, and I’m not that great at painting, but I just thought—”

“It’s beautiful,” Gamora tells her.

“I’ll finish it tomorrow,” Natasha promises. She cradles the little hawk in her palms. “Ready to turn in?”

“Sure,” Gamora agrees, standing up from the table with a stretch. They pad to the bedroom and pull off their boots and bulky outerwear, climbing into the still-somewhat-poky bed—goddamn it, why can’t they find any cotton plants on this world—and settling in together, Gamora’s legs looped casually over hers. “Night,” Gamora says, the happiness Natasha’s efforts have elicited still clear in her voice.

“Night.”

Natasha dreams. It isn’t every night she does, and half the time it’s nightmares anyway, Ivan or the Red Room or Clint’s broken body at the bottom of a cliff. But tonight she gets to spend sunlit hours at the Barton Farm, eat Laura’s good food, soak Cooper and Lila and Nate and a few cows accidentally with water guns. Even when it shifts and changes, her subconscious has smiled upon her, and she gets to admire Kate’s archery skills or trade friendly barbs with Coulson, their old handler back from the dead.

The dream shifts again, and confusion trickles in as Natasha opens her eyes on an unknown yet eerily familiar landscape. It is another world of twilight, almost a mix between Vormir and the Soul World in which she now resides with water everywhere, lapping against her calves, and the burnt orange replaced with a hazy reddish tint. She looks around and spots the only structure visible, an archway with four pillars that is almost East Asian in its design, although something within her thinks _alien_ is probably more accurate. A figure stands between the middle columns, silhouetted by the bright backdrop, but Natasha heads for it anyway. Might as well.

It’s Steve.

She begins running then, a bit befuddled, but happy to see him nonetheless. Her feet splash haphazardly through the cool, crystalline water, spraying her pantlegs with droplets.

“Natasha!” he shouts when she nears. She hugs him as soon as she is close enough, his super-soldier arms wrapping around her and holding on tight. Luckily, like on the Soul World, she doesn’t appear to need to breathe.

“Steve?” she asks when they release each other.

“It’s been a bit longer than a minute,” he says, smiling broadly at her.

“Is this…” Her brows furrow. “Is this real?”

“Yes, Natasha.”

“And…you didn’t throw yourself off a cliff too to get here, right?” she checks.

“No. We don’t trade lives, remember? I’m here to take you home.”

“Steve.” Her face falls. “Steve, you can’t.”

“I can.” He holds out his hand, revealing a small golden Stone glowing in his palm.

“The Soul Stone,” Natasha says. “So you defeated Thanos? You’re returning the Stones?”

“Yes to both,” he confirms, closing his hand again. The glow of the Stone winks out of sight behind the fabric of his glove.

“I still don’t understand. I’m stuck here _forever_ , Steve, Soul Stone or not.”

“Yeah, some sort of _everlasting exchange_ , isn’t that right, Johann?” Steve calls up threateningly toward the sky. “A soul for a soul?”

“And if you’re returning the Stone,” Natasha says, catching on. “The exchange is no longer ‘everlasting.’”

“Right in one,” Steve said. “I can’t take credit, really, it was mostly Clint’s idea. He was pretty desperate for any way to get you back.”

“Clint,” she repeats, joy suffusing her face.

“He’s waiting for you. They all are.”

“And the Guide—Red Skull—Schmidt—agreed?” she asks, barely able to believe it. She can see Clint again. She can see all of them again.

“He didn’t have much of a choice,” Steve said. He lifts his hand above his head, preparing to open his palm again and do—something, Natasha isn’t quite sure what, but she does know he can’t be allowed to do it _yet_.

“Wait. What about Gamora?”

“Gamora?” he asks, faltering. “Daughter of Thanos, Nebula’s sister, Gamora? She’s here, with you?” Natasha nods. “Okay. Did not anticipate that. We, uh, have another Gamora back on Earth. Well, she disappeared after the battle, but she’s around somewhere. Gamora from 2014. But we should have…” He looks at the sky again. “JOHANN.”

The Guide-slash-Red Skull materializes next to them in all of his floaty, dementor-y glory. “Yes, Steven, son of Sarah?”

“I’m changing the deal,” Steve says, staring at his former enemy with a stern expression. “Natasha and Gamora. Both of them for the Stone.”

“Unfortunately, that I cannot allow,” the Skull replies in his gravelly voice. “A soul for a soul. _One_ soul.”

Steve looks back at her and doesn’t quite meet her eyes. “I’m sorry, Natasha.”

“I don’t want to leave without her.”

“Tasha…” His blue eyes are sincere. “I understand, but think about Clint. I promised him I’d bring you home.” He huffs a small laugh. “I think it’s the only thing that made him let me go instead of him; he was pretty adamant.”

She closes her eyes. Clint, Laura, the kids. Of course she wants to see them again. _Gamora_. “All right,” she says. “I want to say goodbye. I don’t want to just…Snap away, disappear on her.”

“Of course,” Steve nods. She closes her eyes, concentrating on waking up.

Wake up.

Wake up.

_WAKE UP._

Her eyes burst open to darkness, to the warmth of the sleeping alien beside her. “Gamora,” she shakes her awake, heart pounding. “Gamora.”

“What is it?” The silvery lines across the woman’s face glow faintly in the darkness. Natasha explains it succinctly as she can. She doesn’t know how long she has.

“I’m sorry,” Natasha tells her when she finishes.

“You’re leaving.” Gamora turns away from her, column of magenta hair obscuring her face. “That’s good. You should go, if you have the chance.”

“Gamora…” Natasha presses. “I will come back for you. I’ll find a way to get you out too. I promise.”

The other woman is silent, and when she does speak, it is barely a whisper, her voice shaken in a way that is very unlike the normally stoic Guardian. “I do not want to live an eternity alone. Just when I had thought I had been spared that fate…when I had gotten a taste of what not being alone would feel like after so long…”

“I will come back for you,” Natasha promises again. “I’m not leaving you here forever. But Gamora—” She forces the alien to look at her, staring into her eyes. “You have to promise me you’ll wait for me. That you won’t use the pit.”

“I won’t.”

“Gamora…”

“Natasha.”

“I’ll come back for you,” she says. There is a tingling sensation in her limbs now, and some part of her knows her time is almost up. She lifts a hand to find it fading, and her eyes meet Gamora’s again. The words feel weighted, haunted on her tongue. _“Whatever it takes.”_

* * *

Solid stone, real air slam into her. Deep purple invades her eyes and she blinks, looking down just in time to see the last particles of dust coalesce to form the tips of her fingers. She is whole once again.

She is _alive_.

“All right there?” Steve asks.

“Fine,” Natasha tells him.

“You look different. I like the braid.”

“Thanks,” she smiles.

He nods at the hand down at her side. “What have you got there?”

Natasha lifts it, realizing she must have been holding onto the wooden bird while she slept. “It’s a hawk. Gamora carved it.”

Steve is somber. “I wish we could have brought her back too.”

“I promised I’d come back for her,” Natasha says. A cold wind blows by her, chilling her through her tac suit—she’d forgotten what _cold_ felt like. She takes in their surroundings—Vormir, the top of the cliff, two tall spires rising high above. The Guide is nowhere to be seen.

_“Then I guess we both know who it’s gotta be. Tell my family I love them. No, please, no.”_

_“Let me go. It’s okay.”_

“Let’s get out of here,” Natasha says, tearing her gaze away from the cliff-edge. “I assume you have a way off?”

“You still have your Time-Space GPS?” Steve asks.

Natasha taps her the button on the inner lining of her suit, and the white quantum suit takes over, although substantially less white than when she’d first traveled to Vormir. She lifts her wrist. “It’s not like we had a change of clothes.”

“All right then,” Steve smiles at her. Joy—no, _giddiness_ —begins to rise within her, lighting up her insides in spite of herself. She’s going home. “Coordinates 43.25.28.74.48.22.12.30.2023.” She shifts the dial on her device, inputting them. When she’s certain they’re in correctly, her finger hovers over the ‘activate’ button. He frowns at her expression. “No, don’t say it…”

She waggles her eyebrows and presses it anyway. “See you in a minute.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just ended up rewatching Vol. 2 again (god I love that movie) and got super sad at the end remembering Gamora's fate in Infinity War, so I figured you all could use an update. That said, if you have any good Starmora fic recs, send them my way because I'm on the hunt for them right now ;)
> 
> Any and all feedback appreciated. Hope you all have a great rest of your day and stay safe out there!
> 
> (Natasha can't paint and neither can I.)


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Freed from the Soul World, Natasha reunites with the Avengers and the Barton family.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> May the 4th be with you ;)

Her feet impact the ground again with a jolt, throwing her forward slightly, and Natasha takes a couple deep breaths while she waits for the world to stop spinning, trying to quell the brief burst of nausea that comes with every trip through the quantum realm. A foot away, Steve is similarly unbalanced, but a few seconds later Natasha has recovered enough to take in her surroundings.

There’s _green_.

So much green. They are standing in a grassy area that she recognizes as part of the land belonging to the Avengers Compound, shaded by trees. She looks up. The sky is a bright, beautiful blue. At this point she could stand to never see orange again, and maybe purple too—no offense, Clint.

A movement in the green catches her attention, and she turns to her left to see Bruce-Hulk waving at her from next to the Quantum Tunnel controls. “Bruce!” She takes the steps off of the rig’s platform two at a time, embracing him.

“Good to see you, Tasha,” he smiles at her. “I’m glad you’re back.”

“Me too,” she says. “Bruce. _Thank you_.”

“Of course.”

Another figure is standing off to the side a little. “Wanda!” Natasha says, giving the young woman a hug. There are tears in her eyes if she’s not mistaken, and she hugs Natasha back just as fiercely.

“I’m so glad you’re here,” Wanda mumbles near her ear. “ _Someone_ had to come back…” Natasha’s heart clenches at that statement and she squeezes her tighter for it. Wanda had lost so many in her short life so far—Pietro, Vision, and now Natasha—and she’s glad she no longer needs to be counted among that number. When Wanda finally lets her go, she wipes some of the tears from her eyes shakily. “Clint wanted to be here, Natasha, he’s just still with the kids—” Natasha smiles at the very thought. “They’re waiting for you at the Farm. He didn’t want to get their hopes up too much if it didn’t—if it didn’t work.”

“We’ve got a Quinjet prepped and waiting,” Steve says from behind her. “Rhodey and Sam are bringing it over.” Sure enough, the roar of a Quinjet becomes audible to her ears, and she spots it flying low across the skyline and getting larger.

“Since we’re all the way out here, I assume the Avengers Compound was damaged in the battle?” she asks.

“Destroyed,” Bruce tells her, the solemn look in his eyes telling her she missed quite a bit. “Rebuilding is ongoing…”

“There’s been a lot of things that need rebuilding,” Wanda says. “When everyone came back in the Blip…well, it wasn’t the world we remembered. Food, housing, utilities were all a problem for a while.”

“Avengers stuff has taken a back burner to rebuilding,” Steve nods.

“I’ve been alternating between helping out in Sokovia and staying at the Farm,” Wanda says. “Clint and Laura have been very kind. And the kids are adorable.”

“That’s what they do,” Natasha says, raising her voice as the wind from the landing Quinjet sweeps over them all. “Are you coming back with me?”

“No, I…just needed to see you for myself,” Wanda tells her. “I’ve got another flight out to Ognigrad tonight.”

The back of the Quinjet opens, and Rhodey and Sam step out. Natasha exchanges hugs with each of them, still slightly in stunned disbelief that she is here, back on Earth. Then they bid her goodbye and she is walking up the Quinjet ramp, sitting in the pilot seat, and then off the ground, rising into the air. Natasha puts the setting sun in her sights and sends the Quinjet shooting off westward, every thrum of the engine making her heart beat a little faster.

She’s going home.

* * *

It is Cooper who comes barreling at her first, but barely—he only beats out Clint by sheer daring as he vaults over the porch railing instead of taking the steps. He slams into her at the edge of the Quinjet’s ramp just like he used to when he was a child, except instead of hitting her in the knees it is her shoulders that take the brunt of it. He’s taller than her now, she realizes as she hugs him, taller than her by a good half-foot at least. Not that he wasn’t before the Snap, but the teenage growth spurt had been relatively new, and somehow it still takes her by surprise. “I missed you,” he chokes out, and all it takes is the realization that he’s crying before she is too, because goddamnit she loves these kids.

Clint is next, skidding to a stop over Cooper’s shoulder and just staring at her hungrily, his eyes red-rimmed but shining. It’s obvious he wants to embrace her just as much as his son, but he won’t interrupt their moment. Lila, the third, shares no such predilections, pushing Cooper to the side slightly so she can hug Natasha too, her arms thrown around her waist and squeezing tight. Lila is not tall enough to dwarf Natasha—yet?—and she wraps one arm around the girl and feels her tears begin to seep through her tac suit. Nate runs up behind her, somehow weasels in between his brother and sister until he is grasping her legs, screaming, “Auntie Nat! Auntie Nat!” and suddenly Natasha has all the Barton children hugging her and her heart has never felt like it was about to burst so much as right this moment.

Laura comes up last, embracing Clint from behind and placing her head on his shoulder. They both gaze at her, eyes bright, and it’s all Natasha can do wrapped up as she is to mouth _“I love you”_ at them. From the way Laura gives a choked, throaty laugh and Clint starts crying for real she knows they understand. Finally, Cooper, Lila, and Nate begin to release her and step away, although she notices Nate’s little hand stays attached to her thigh and Lila’s fingers twist their way through the loop on her utility belt and she realizes they don’t want to let go either, not even for a second.

Then Clint is there, her partner, the person she trusts most in the world and the one—maybe not the only one—she would literally die for, and had. His arms are as strong and secure as she remembers them and he smells of safety and home. Laura is there too, Natasha’s longtime friend and confidant and…well, she can’t quite describe what else Laura is to her, because words don’t seem to capture it entirely, but when the two adults finally pull away she does know that there is a fresh round of tears on her face and theirs. On unspoken agreement they begin to troop back to the house together, an unbroken line that all seems to lead back to Natasha. They stumble up the porch steps like that and into the living room and collapse on the worn sofa in a tangle of limbs. Natasha is in the middle, her head somehow on Laura’s lap, her feet kicking against Clint’s and all three Barton children hanging off her or cuddled up to her side. They lay like that for a while, just basking in each other’s presence.

“We missed you, Auntie Nat,” Lila reminds her every so often.

“Yeah! So much,” Cooper adds.

“Don’t ever leave again,” Nate says, hugging her waist.

“I’m not planning to, not like that,” Natasha promises them.

“Were you scared?” Lila asks quietly.

“A little. But your dad had to come home to you, and you guys all had to come home, and that was the most important thing,” she tells them.

“Did it hurt?” Across the way, Clint gives her a concerned look. Natasha thinks back to what she remembers of the fall— “No, Coop,” she lies, but only a little bit. “It was fast. I just thought of your mom and dad and you guys and all the other people who needed me to do it and—” She blinked. “And then it was done. I woke up.”

“You woke up?” Lila says in a hushed voice. “ _Where?_ ”

“When Captain America came to get you?” Nate asks.

“No, before that. The Soul Stone—there’s a world that you go to, when you get sacrificed. I woke up there. And I found Gamora.”

“Is she the green one?” Nate wants to know. “Nebula’s sister?” His eyes widen comically at his father’s accusatory look. “I only watched a little of the battle footage, I promise! Cooper and Lila watched more.”

“Hey!” Lila kicks at him.

“We’ll deal with that later,” Clint says as Laura sends her daughter a firm glance for kicking her younger brother.

“Yes, she has green skin,” Natasha confirms. “She’s Zehoberei, from a planet far away from here.”

“Whoa,” Nate breathes.

“And so you were alone with her in that place for two months?” Cooper asks.

Natasha looks quickly at Clint. “It’s been two months?”

Clint nods. “And eleven days.” He looks down. “And six hours.” A sharp pang sweeps through her at his expression, and she gets the sense he could name it down to the minutes and seconds too.

“Yeah,” she says, turning back to Cooper in lieu of pursuing that line of thought in front of the kids. “We were both stuck there.”

“What did you _do_?” Nate says, open-mouthed.

Natasha can’t help the smile that transforms her face. “We built a house. And a farm.”

“Like here?”

Surprise hits her. “I never thought about it that way, but…yes.” She hugs all the kids she can reach close to her. “I guess my subconscious missed you so much that we built whatever we could to feel close to you.”

“Natasha Romanoff, Vormir farmer,” Clint jokes. “Never thought that’d be the day.”

“It wasn’t Vormir,” she says. “In the end…we called it the Soul World.”

“Whoa.”

“Cool.”

“Not that cool,” Cooper argues. “It’s better now that you’re here. With us. Right?”

“Right,” Natasha tells him. “I missed all of you so much.”

“We missed you too!”

“Stay forever, Auntie Nat!”

“Please?”

Natasha smiles, pressing kisses down on all of their heads. When she thinks again of Gamora, her gut twists a little, but she says the words anyway. “I’m not going anywhere.”

* * *

The night at the Barton Farmhouse is bright, full of laughter, good food, and people she loves. It is past three a.m. before they are tromping off to bed, as neither Clint nor Laura seems particularly inclined to end the festivities until Nate is halfway passed out on the kitchen table and Cooper is stifling yawns large enough to crack his head open behind his hand. As she gets ready for bed, Natasha revels in the sensations the Soul World was missing—a full stomach, chocolate, the feeling of soap between her fingers. The hot water of the shower is blissful, although she could do without the annoyance of brushing her teeth.

She has just turned out the light and crawled under the covers of the blessedly soft bed—her bed, in her room, because of course nothing has changed in the Barton house while she was gone—when the door creaks open and Clint sneaks inside, practically throwing himself at the mattress with a _fwump_. He only makes it about halfway, his head nowhere near the pillows and his legs dangling off the end near his kneecaps, but Natasha knows that is part of his point. And part of him being, well, Clint.

“Never do that to me again,” he mumbles into the bedsheets.

“I won’t,” Natasha says in a light-hearted tone. “You know me, one-time universe saver and that’s it.”

“Good,” Clint says, shifting so that one ear is pressed into the mattress instead of his entire face and he can see her expression. “I’m glad you’re owning it.”

“I was joking.”

“But that’s what you _did_.”

“Yeah, well…” She ducks her head. “You tried to too, so.” She quirks an eyebrow. “I just had the upper hand.”

“Yeah, see…” Clint says, his voice becoming shakier with every word he utters despite the strained lightness he’s desperately trying for. “…knew I should never have brought you into S.H.I.E.L.D., sparred with you every day…taught you all my best moves…” He visibly gulps, trying to get the words out despite his throat closing up and eyes filling with tears.

“Clint…” Natasha said, pain piercing her chest just seeing _him_ in pain. She holds out her arms, then drags him upwards, closer to her. “C’mere. Don’t. It’s okay.” She strokes his hair as the shaking of his shoulders only intensifies, his face smushed into her collarbone that is getting decidedly wet. “I’m here. I’m back.”

“I tried not to fall apart,” Clint tells her, the words slightly muffled but understandable nonetheless. “I tried so hard to keep it together. I’m sorry. I knew it’s what you would have wanted, it was just so hard…”

“I know,” Natasha soothes. “But you did it. The kids are healthy, Laura is happy… you brought me back. Steve told me it was your idea, and you did it.”

“I’m sorry,” Clint begs. “I’m sorry I didn’t stop you. You could have done it better. All of it better. And sooner, and…”

“I’m not sorry,” Natasha tells him fiercely. “It was my choice, Clint. You hear me? And I don’t regret any of it.”

“Not having you here…” Clint whispers. “It was like a piece of _me_ was missing.”

“Hey,” Natasha shushes him, pressing a kiss to the top of his head. “I’m here, Clint. I’m here.” She pulls him closer until he is cuddled against her, her hand still raking over his hair and back as he slowly quiets.

The door creaks again in the semi-darkness, and Laura slips inside. “Sorry,” Natasha whispers. “Did you want him back?”

Laura gives her a look that is clearly _Don’t be ridiculous_ and climbs into bed on Natasha’s other side, one of her legs wrapping over her hip to hold her close and her arm encircling her waist. Smiling in spite of her own Clint-induced tears, Natasha frees her other hand to run through Laura’s soft hair, feeling more than hearing the other woman sniffle against her side.

“We could go to your guys’ bed,” Natasha says uncertainly, huffing a small, watery laugh. “It’s bigger.”

“No, we’re not going anywhere,” Clint mumbles, arm clamping around Natasha’s middle should she try to move.

“We’re staying right here,” Laura agrees, tugging her closer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All hail Natasha Romanoff, the first of her name, Giver and Receiver of Hugs, Queen of Cuddles, Auntie Adored, and saver of the universe.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Natasha reveals her plan to save Gamora.

When Natasha wakes, she wakes slowly, and overly warm. Burning, even. Blinking, she sits up slightly, extricating herself from Clint or Laura’s arm—Clint’s, definitely Clint’s—and propping herself up on one elbow. Cooper, Lila, and Nate are sprawled across the lower half of her bed too, thus the near-suffocating warmth. She smiles. “We _really_ should have used the bigger bed.”

“We didn’t count on the invaders,” Clint mumbles sleepily. He rubs a hand across his face and shifts his legs underneath the covers, only to accidentally knock Cooper’s head right into Nate’s, who’s curled up next to him.

“Ow!”

“Hey!”

“Mamaaa…”

Laura wakens quickly to the sound of that, kissing Nate’s head all better and surveying the cuddle-pile for herself. “All right, everyone up,” she tells them. “Last one down to breakfast does _all_ the dishes.” Instantly Cooper, Nate, and Clint are all bolting out of bed, their sudden movements rocking Lila awake where she blinks sleepily. Laura winks at Natasha before she closes the door behind her herd of boys.

“Wuzzgoin’on?” Lila mumbles.

“Your mom is tricking your brothers,” Natasha tells her, looping her arm around her waist and dragging Lila back into bed with her, cuddling her close.

“What?”

“Never mind,” Natasha says. “How are you doing, Li?”

“Good now that you’re here,” Lila smiles up at her. “Everything’s good now that you’re here.” She leans in close. “Wanna know a secret?”

“Sure.”

Lila looks at her seriously. “I think it was really bad for Dad.” Natasha’s brow furrows. “‘Cause, like, Coop and Nate and I missed you a lot, but it’s only been two months…but for Dad…he lost us for five years, and then he lost you…” Lila hugs her. “I’m really glad you’re back, Auntie Nat.”

“Me too,” Natasha says, kissing the top of her head. “Anything else you want to tell me?”

The girl fidgets a little. “Promise you won’t make fun of me?”

“Never.”

“Well…Coop thinks I’m making it up, and I don’t think Mom and Dad believe me either, but…I _felt_ you.” Natasha’s brow furrows, a sense of dawning realization creeping up on her. “Right when we came back from the Snap—I felt you there with me when I reappeared, but I looked around, and it was just the three of us, and it didn’t make any sense.” Lila swallows. “Do you think I’m crazy?”

“No,” Natasha assures her. “Listen…when I first got to the Soul World, there were other people in it too. Shadows, ghosts, of the people who had been Snapped. And while I was there, I found you. I sat with you, until the…” She searches for the word, Lila’s wide eyes never leaving hers. “… _Blip_ brought you all back.”

“So it really did happen?” Lila asks. “I didn’t imagine it?”

“No, I don’t think so,” Natasha tells her, happy that she is happy. Lila scrambles out of the bed.

“I gotta go tell Coop!” She pauses in the doorway. “You’re staying for breakfast, right?”

“Right,” Natasha promises, the word making her think of the other promise she’s made. One that she entirely intends to keep.

Grinning, Lila throws the door open only to run smack into her father, who laughs a little like he doesn’t quite remember how to do it and gets out of her way. He turns back to Natasha, pausing as he spots her expression. “You’re going to go back for her, aren’t you?” he asks quietly.

Natasha blinks, dragging her gaze out of her own mind and up to meet his. “Wow, you got all that from one pensive look?”

“Well, I do know you,” he jokes. “But no. Also…yesterday.”

“She’s stuck there, Clint,” Natasha says. “Alone.”

“Last I checked we don’t have the means to fight incorporeal ex-Nazi Stone guardians or an extra Soul Stone lying around,” he says. “You got a plan?”

“Beginnings of one,” she says. “Maybe.”

“And I don’t suppose this plan is safe and entirely risk-free?” he sighs.

“For _eternity_ , Clint.”

“I know.” He takes a deep breath, looking up at the ceiling before back at her. “I know.” He jerks his head backwards, out toward the hallway. “Well then, you might want to get dressed. Someone’s here to see you, and you can tell him all about it.”

* * *

“I never really got it,” Steve tells her, looking out over the Bartons’ large vegetable garden. They’re in the fields, away from the prying ears of children, and Steve is still being unusually cagey about why he’s come. “When we first landed here after taking that hit from Ultron, I looked around, I saw what Clint had built for himself, and I thought—that isn’t me. I don’t know if I will ever be ready for that. To hang up the shield, trust others to do the world-saving and relax. But now…after the five years we’ve just had…”

“What are you saying, Steve?”

“I’m saying…now that you’re back, I think I’m going to do it.”

“Now that I’m…”

“Natasha, you led the Avengers for five of the hardest years we’ll hopefully ever face. And you did it with barely any help from the rest of us. I trust you to lead them onward.”

She quirks a smile. “And you’re just gonna go live on a farm somewhere?”

Steve shifts his shoulders. “Well, maybe not a farm, exactly.” He reaches into the pocket of his pants, pulling out a glowing blue stone. “One more to go. And then I was thinking…maybe make another stop after it’s done.”

“ _Steve_ …” She understands what he’s saying, the sheer magnitude of it. “Are you sure?”

“Had all of five years and three months to think about it,” he nods. “I’m really just here to say goodbye.”

“Wait.” She lays a hand on his arm. “One more mission. I have a plan—well, most of a plan—to rescue Gamora.”

“Natasha…” His expression is uneasy at best.

“We don’t need to fight Red Skull, or the Guide, or whatever he’s calling himself now. All we need is to strike another bargain. All we need is another Soul Stone.”

His brow furrows. “We’re not throwing anyone else over a cliff… We don’t trade lives. Natasha, you can’t be seriously saying—”

“I’m not,” Natasha says. “But we know when the Soul Stone will be taken out of the vault on Vormir. All we have to do is take it from him.”

“Him being _Thanos_.” Steve is looking at her with pity in his eyes, which is the exact opposite of what she wants him to feel. “Natasha, I know you want to do whatever you can to help Gamora, but _this_ …fighting Thanos again… It’s not worth the risk.”

“He’ll only have three Stones this time. We can catch him by surprise. Bring all our biggest guns—you, Thor, Tony, Bruce, Carol…”

Steve’s jaw clenches. “Tasha…Tony is dead.”

“What?” Shock suffuses her. Tony…dead?

“It’s how we won,” Steve tells her, looking very pained. “During the battle…we had the Snapped back, but Thanos followed us through the portal…switched Nebula when we weren’t looking. He had his entire army chasing the Gauntlet.”

“No,” Natasha whispers.

“Tony put it on, and Snapped his fingers, and they all…faded away. His sacrifice saved…everyone.”

The news is almost too big to believe, if it wasn’t for the actual pain in Steve’s eyes. Tony Stark, gone. Iron Man, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist, _friend_ …gone.

“The last real conversation he and I had, he said to me, ‘Keep what I found? I have to, at all costs’…and he made the sacrifice anyway. Everything—almost everything—is put right. Billions of people have their lives back. Tony was right—we can’t risk that.”

“Steve…”

He shakes his head. “I can’t let you do it. Bruce has instructions to destroy the Quantum Tunnel after I leave. I’m sorry, Natasha.”

* * *

She rings the doorbell, her fingers shaking a little, but she has to be here. She needs to see them. To tell them—to tell them she’s sorry. “I got it!” a little voice shouts from inside, and a thundering pitter-patter of small footsteps runs toward the door.

“Morgan—no—”

The door opens, revealing a certain Peter Parker, who is struggling to hold back a very excited Morgan. The shock is clear on his face, while Morgan only looks delighted. “Aunt Natasha?!” Peter releases her and Morgan goes barreling into Natasha’s legs, squeezing them tight.

“Hi, Morgan,” Natasha greets the little girl, bending down to hug her back.

“Ms. Natasha—I mean, Black Widow—I—”

“Hey, kid,” Natasha says, giving Peter a hug as well.

“How—?” Peter splutters.

She opens her mouth to answer but is momentarily distracted by a tug on her shirt, and she looks down at the little girl standing excitedly in front of her. “Did you bring Daddy with you too?” Morgan asks.

“I’m so sorry,” Natasha says, seated at Pepper’s kitchen table. The sound of Peter and Morgan finally playing again in her room echoes from upstairs. It had only taken an hour of crying and comforting from Pepper to make that happen. “I should have called first, I should have thought about how it would look—”

“No, it’s fine,” Pepper assures her. The smile she gives her is genuine, though not entirely erasing the tightness around her eyes, the lines of grief.

“I just—I’m still trying to wrap my head around the fact that he’s gone,” she says. “When Steve told me two days ago…”

“Well, it’s been two months for us, and some days I still wake up and don’t quite believe it,” Pepper admits. “I roll over and he’s not there, but maybe he’s just tinkering in the garage, or playing with Morgan… And then I remember, and I lose him all over again.”

“I’m so sorry, Pepper,” Natasha says, meaning it.

The other woman clasps her hand across the table top. “Thank you.” She smiles again. “And thank you for—you know. Peter. Everyone else. I never doubted you had it in you, Natasha.”

Natasha ducks her head slightly; being thanked is weird, and she hasn’t quite gotten used to it despite the number of phone calls saying exactly that she’s gotten in the last couple days as word slowly spreads. As succinctly as she can, she explains her return to Pepper, focusing mostly on the Soul World and Steve’s bargain with the Red Skull.

“I’m glad,” Pepper tells her. “I’m really, really glad.”

“Yeah, well…” She bites her lip. “Would you hate me for possibly…throwing it all away?” Pepper purses her lips, gazing at her thoughtfully. “What I did, what Tony did… It would be at risk.”

“Everything in life is a risk,” Pepper tells her. Something of Pepper Potts, Stark Industries CEO glints in her eyes, replacing Pepper Potts, widowed mother of one. “With proper risk mitigation…”

“Gamora’s still stuck on the Soul World,” Natasha says. “The original one. I promised I’d come back for her. But it feels…selfish, putting everything—everyone—at risk like that.” She looks down. “Steve was very clear about that. And…I can’t say that he was wrong.”

“If it was me or Morgan stuck there, Tony would have done it in a heartbeat,” Pepper tells her. “If it was Bucky, Steve would have. Even when it was Vision, who wasn’t even on his side in the war—”

“He didn’t let him. We could have destroyed the Mind Stone and Thanos’s plans right there, at the beginning.”

“Exactly.” Pepper looks at her with a clear, hard-eyed gaze. “You’re not a rash person, Natasha. You’re level-headed, and selfless, and I know if you’re going to do this, you’re going to do it right.”

“Thank you, Pepper,” Natasha says, squeezing her hand tight across the table. “And—I really am sorry.”

“Me too.”

* * *

She waits with baited breath. His expression is blank, at least for anyone who is not Natasha or Laura, and she can see the slight crease in his brow and the minuscule twitch of his Adam’s apple that betray his warring emotions. Natasha fights the urge to say something else, because he deserves this time to think in peace, after all she’s asking of him.

“I don’t understand,” he says finally, “and I know it’s because I wasn’t there to get to know her like you were. I’ll support whatever decision you make, Nat, you know I always will, but—”

“It could have been me, Clint,” she says softly. “It could have been the Guardians returning the Stones and bargaining back for Gamora’s life instead of Steve. And I went willingly—I willingly made that sacrifice expecting to die or be kept for eternity or whatever it required of me, because it was worth it. Gamora—she was used, and she didn’t have a choice. She’d been fighting Thanos all her adult life, and now she’s stuck there alone for eternity because of him, while I volunteered to be there and just get to walk away.” She swallows. “ _That could have been me, Clint._ ”

“Okay,” he says, and she knows he’s been convinced. With Pepper’s blessing, and now Clint in agreement— “Have you thought any more about the plan?”

“A bit,” Natasha says. “But we’re going to need more bodies. People we can trust not to try to stop us.”

“Well,” Clint replies, looking at her seriously, “there is at least one person who wants to save Gamora more than you. Still got that inter-galactic transceiver?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All feedback appreciated :)) Most of you can probably guess where we're going with this!


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Natasha gets in touch with the Guardians of the Galaxy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this was originally the Guardians chapter!! Side note on that, writing the Guardians is absolute-fucking-chaos, and this is basically just me doing callbacks to every single GotG joke in existence. I fit 16 joke references in here, guys; be proud of me. 
> 
> But first, ANGST. Blame DopeyTheDwarf once again for the angst and for providing the excellent voice of reason that is Laura. You now know who to go after with the pitchforks ;)

She tells them about the plan: Laura, Cooper, Lila, and Nate sitting on the couch and Clint standing by her side. Then, at their expressions of shocked disbelief, she tells them again.

“Natasha,” Laura says finally, using that slow tone of voice that means she’s processing a lot or just choosing her words very carefully. In this case, she can’t quite tell which it is. Probably both. “That’s… Are you sure this is the best course of action?” Though Laura would never say it, it’s clear she thinks it’s very much not.

“You’re gonna go _away_?” Nate demands, cutting right over his mother’s more reasoned approach with a red face and fists balled at his sides.

“We just got you back!” Cooper says, equally incensed.

“It’s not forever,” Natasha tries. “A couple weeks, max. And Clint and I will call you guys every day.”

“You don’t know it’s not forever!” the oldest Barton child accuses. “The first time you went to Vormir, you didn’t know it was going to be forever then!”

“We lost you once already, Nat,” Laura says softly, her lips pursed tightly. Her voice trembles over her name, a sign that she’s teetering on the brink. And Laura isn’t someone who cries often. “That was hard enough.”

“Please don’t go, Auntie Nat,” Nate requests, tears clear in his wide brown eyes.

“You’re not going to lose me again,” she says, even though she knows it’s a promise she can’t make. “I have to go. I have to do this. Gamora needs me, and I’m the only one she’s got.” 

“You’re all _we’ve_ got too,” Laura tells her fiercely. Natasha frowns, opening her mouth to argue, but for once Laura steamrollers right over her. “No, you listen for just one second, okay? You are _valued_ , and you are _loved_. You have a home here.”

“I know that,” Natasha says, flummoxed.

“I’m not sure you do,” Laura says, gaze flinty. “Sometimes—like right this moment—I think you’re a self-sacrificing asshole who, despite all this time, cannot fathom being loved as deeply as you are.”

Silence greets this statement from every single one of them, only broken by a somewhat awed Nathaniel: “Swear jar, Mama.”

“Asshole’s not a _real_ swear,” Cooper rolls his eyes. Clint shoots him a warning glance.

Natasha can’t break Laura’s iron gaze. The woman has been a rock in her life since they were first introduced, her best friend other than Clint, brimming with kindness, a willing ear and unfailingly supportive. But this time…this time she fears that she’s finally asked for too much. “I do know that,” she says, cheeks heating. Pain crushes her chest, the feeling of her heart being squeezed into oblivion until there’s nothing left but the hard core of certainty. “This isn’t easy for me, Laura. I don’t want to put you guys through this again. It’s the _last_ thing I want. You missed me for three months? I missed you for _five years_ —”

“Hey, it’s not a competition,” Clint says.

“—so sure as hell I threw myself off that cliff if it was going to bring you four back,” Natasha continues as if she hadn’t been interrupted. “But Gamora—the things we went through together—that place—I can’t describe what it’s like, feeling that lonely, that alone, and that was when we were both in there together. A whole world where the only thing on it is you. No connections, no words, no voices. No sunrise or sunset. Nothing you do matters. Everything is meaningless. _You_ are meaningless. For eternity.” She swallows. “Gamora, what we went through—she’s family now to me too. And if there’s a chance of rescuing her from that place, I have to take it.”

They stare at each other a few seconds more, each willing the other to understand. Finally, Laura looks down. “I’m not going to tell you not to do it,” she says quietly. “I have never told you that. I just want to make sure you know…how much the outcome of your actions will affect us. The people who care about you.”

“I know,” Natasha promises, matching her soft tone. “I know, and that is why I will do everything humanly possible to make it back. No unnecessary risks.”

There’s a moment of silence, then Laura nods. “No unnecessary risks,” she says. That, at least, binds them—the one thing they can agree upon.

Natasha shifts her attention to Cooper, who glances at his mom. “Please come back, Auntie Nat,” is all he says, but it’s heartfelt enough that she’s immediately filled with the need to envelop him in a large hug for the next hour or so.

Taking his cue from his mother and big brother, Nate nods as well, putting on a brave face in an attempt to look just as grown-up. “And bring Gamora with you, and Godslayer!”

“Swords are not toys,” Natasha says, but her lips curve upward all the same. “But I’ll see what I can do.” Her gaze falls on Lila, who stares into the middle distance and has not said a word for this entire conversation. “Lila?” she asks gently. “How do you feel?”

The girl’s eyes drag to meet hers, face pale. “I think I’m gonna throw up.”

“What?” Natasha says. Clint springs into action immediately, running to get a bucket, while Natasha sinks to her knees in front of her, taking in her pale skin and trembling fingers. It’s not the best place to be to avoid being splattered by projectile vomit, but she’ll take the risk. “You’re not going to throw up,” Natasha says in a voice that is forcibly calm even as Clint sprints to their side with the bucket in his grasp.

Lila just shakes her head, lips pursed tightly together and her breaths coming in ragged gasps through flared nostrils.

“Hey, focus on me,” Natasha says, taking Lila’s hand in her own. It’s cold and clammy to the touch, and Natasha presses inward with her thumb on her palm, rubbing it in circles. “You’re okay, just breathe.” The girl visibly gulps, but does as instructed, mouth opening a few millimeters for a easier intake of air. Natasha can feel the pounding of her pulse through the tender veins in her skin. She’s vaguely aware of Cooper and Nate watching around her, but Laura’s keeping them back. “Slowly, and nice and deep if you can. Try to be aware of your body, and release any tension you’re holding in your muscles. It’ll help signal your brain that there’s no reason to panic.”

Lila nods jerkily. Her abdomen spasms as she tries to relax it, and Natasha keeps up the random patterns of pressure she’s drawing into her palm, taking hold of the other one too until she has one hand in each of hers. “That’s it, breathe. You’re doing great.” Slowly, the girl’s eyes get a little less wild, and her breathing returns to something resembling normal. Natasha knows it’s over when her body slumps back against the couch.

“Was that your first panic attack?” Natasha asks gently. Lila shakes her head. She looks from her to Clint, who is still hovering by her shoulder. “How long has this been happening?”

“It was very hard, after we lost you,” Laura says, coming forward to run her hand over the top of Lila’s head, smoothing a bit of sweaty hair away from her daughter’s forehead. “They’d been getting better…”

Natasha closes her eyes. “I’m so sorry, Lila.”

“It’s not your fault,” the girl says with visible effort. “You were just being a hero.”

“Still,” Natasha says. “I hate that I caused you pain. Any of you.”

“You knew how to help me calm down,” Lila says. “Did you used to have panic attacks too?”

“Sometimes,” she nods. “Deprogramming with S.H.I.E.L.D. and your dad was…a lot. But mostly growing up in the Red Room…there were a lot of stressors, a lot of things to cause fight-or-flight, all the time. I mostly learned how to control the anxiety then, or I never would have made it through the training. Bodies don’t do well when constantly reacting to danger.”

“Panic attacks suck,” Lila laughs shakily. “I’m sorry you had to go through that too.”

Natasha kisses her forehead. “It was a long time ago.”

“You’ll call us every day?” she asks.

“Yes. And you can text whenever you want,” she promises.

Clint shifts on his feet. “I don’t know if I should go, Nat.” He glances at Laura, then back at his daughter. “If something happens…both of us at once…”

Natasha nods, regretting the loss but understanding his reasoning perfectly and not begrudging him one iota for it.

“No!” Lila says. They both look at her. “You have to go, Dad.”

“But you might need me…”

“I have Mom,” she says. “I’ll be fine. And you need to go too, so that Auntie Nat comes back. When we were kids, you both went on tons of missions and always came back. So you go together.” She glares at them. “Got it?”

“…Got it.”

“If you’re sure,” Natasha says. She stands from her crouched position, only now realizing the vague ache in her ankles from holding it so long. She checks her watch. “They’ll be landing soon.”

Clint nods in acknowledgement, going upstairs to grab each of their packed go-bags. He sets them by the door and comes back in for a round of goodbye hugs that turns into two and then three apiece. Natasha holds every Barton child and Laura as tight to her as she possibly can without hurting them, knowing and hating that she is hurting them just by leaving, even if she doesn’t have any other choice.

Then she walks away, hefting her go-bag and opening the door.

“And Natasha?” Laura causes her to pause and turn back once more, eyes ancient and knowing. “That pain you think you cause? We will _always_ take that pain, if it is the price of loving you.”

* * *

Natasha shades her eyes against the sun with one hand as the Benatar dips toward the ground, the gray-blue and orange metal reflecting the glare. The wind gusts around her, whipping through her hair as the ship hovers, extends its landing gear, and then finally touches down on the grass. The coordinates she gave Rocket are about twenty miles from the Barton Farmhouse and in the middle of nowhere, which should keep them out of sight for now. The back of the Benatar extends into a ramp, and Clint gives her an uneasy look before following her onboard. She knows what he’s thinking—remembering the last time they walked up this ramp together—but Rocket greets them at the top of it before she can think of something reassuring to say what with their tacit agreement not to speak about what had happened at the Farm until a later time.

“Hey, I heard you were dead,” the raccoon greets her. “You don’t look dead.”

“Thanks,” she says.

He nods at Clint. “How you doin’, mohawk?” Rocket jerks his head further inside in an indication to follow. “They’re waiting.” Courtesy of his four limbs Rocket scurries up the ladder to the rest of the ship faster than either of them, Natasha climbing up behind him and Clint pulling up the rear. They emerge in the central living quarters behind the large cockpit, eyed by a cluster of people standing in a lopsided semi-circle. Natasha recognizes most of them either from their past interactions pre- or post-Snap or descriptions she’s heard from others: Thor, of course, his hair looking more kempt than she had seen him last; Gamora’s sister Nebula, standing with her thin, angular arms crossed; a woman dressed in green with two antennae on her head who must be Mantis; a large man covered in red—scars? tattoos? markings?—who can only be Drax; the tree-like creature she met at the Battle of Wakanda, Groot, playing some sort of retro-sounding video game; and a human who she can only assume is the leader of the group and Gamora’s…whatever he was, Peter Quill.

“Natasha!” Thor booms, a massive smile overtaking his face. He reaches for her with both arms spread wide, enveloping her in a bone-crushing hug. “You’re alive.”

“It’s good to see you too, Thor,” she tells him genuinely. It’s not just his hair that looks better—some of the sparkle has returned to his eyes and it even looks like he’s lost weight, too. Behind her, Clint receives a similarly enthusiastic greeting as she says hello to or introduces herself to the rest of the Guardians of the Galaxy.

“Sorry to interrupt,” Quill says when they’re finished, “but you told Rocket you had information about Gamora? ‘Cause we’ve been searching for her for months, and if you know where she is—”

“The Soul World,” Natasha says. Immediately all chatter in the room stops. Groot even lifts his eyes from his game.

“The what?”

“She’s talking about the original Gamora, not the one from 2014,” Clint clarifies.

Quill’s eyes widen. “Gamora…?” he asks in a hushed voice.

As quickly as she can, Natasha summarizes her experience on Vormir and the Soul World after. “Steve was able to get me out, but he didn’t know about Gamora at the time. I promised I’d go back for her.”

“She’s alive,” Quill says, his eyes full of tears. “Did she…did she mention me at all?”

“Yeah, or me?” Rocket wants to know.

“I am Groot?”

“She talked about all of you,” Natasha assures them. “You most of all, Quill.”

He swallows hard, hands clenched at his sides. “All right, how do we get to this Soul World place? We’ll bust her out; we’ve done it before.”

“Not so fast,” Clint advises.

“The Soul World will not be like the Kyln,” Nebula says.

“I have a plan,” Natasha reveals. “But I’ll need your help.”

“Does it involve dancing?” Drax asks. “Because otherwise Quill may be very useless.”

The man in question shoots him a dirty look. “That’s not all I can do, a-hole!”

“Dancing?” Clint dares to ask.

Drax looks concerned. “You do not know the tale of the dance-off to save the universe?”

Natasha holds up a hand. “ _I_ know the story. Gamora told me everything.”

“Everything,” Drax says, impressed. “Did she tell you about the twin moons of Krylor? The fact that I have been named the most humble being on this ship? The—” Rocket throws something metallic at his head, where it bounces off and skitters away across the floor, and Nebula hisses, reaching for one of her electro-shock batons.

“HEY,” Quill says loudly. They all look at him, and him at Natasha. “ _We’re listening_.”

“Steve was able to bargain with the Stone’s protector on Vormir for my life in exchange for returning the Soul Stone,” she continues as if the interruption hadn’t happened. “So, we should be able to do the same for Gamora if we have one. We already have the technology to go back in time—all we need to do is go back to when Thanos first got the Stone and take it from him.”

“Take it from him,” Rocket repeats dubiously. “Thanos.”

“My father had three Stones already when he left for Vormir with Gamora. The Power, Space, and Reality Stones,” Nebula says. “We will lose if we try to fight him. Again.”

“Not if we catch him by surprise, and not if we work together,” Natasha replies. “According to Clint, after he got the Stone, he woke up on a different part of Vormir lying in water and somewhat disoriented.” Beside her, her partner nods. “Clint can find that location again, and we can be waiting there for the moment Thanos gets the Stone. If he doesn’t wake up right away, we just take it and come back to the present—we don’t even have to fight him. If he does wake up—”

“I shall go for the head,” Thor says, looking grimly pleased with the prospect.

Quill puts up a hand. “If all that is true…” He pauses. “It’s an all right plan. If we use some elements from my earlier, very awesome plan, it’ll be even better.”

“If you guys are in, we can work together on the exact details—”

“There’s a ‘but’ coming,” Rocket mutters. “See, Groot, there’s always a ‘but.’”

“ _But_ there’s some equipment we need to get first. Pym particles, suits that can stand up to the atomic forces in the Quantum Realm. Rocket and Nebula know what I’m talking about.”

“I still got my suit somewhere in my bunk,” the raccoon says, gesturing back behind him with his thumb.

“Somewhere?” Quill asks.

“You were supposed to turn that back in,” Clint says.

“Your facility got destroyed, maybe it was buried in the rubble,” Rocket says, turning his face to wink at Quill. “I’m using my right eye this time, right?”

“Clint and I still have ours,” Natasha says, deciding not to even engage with that one. “Nebula, yours and all the others that were made should be in storage at the temporary Avengers facility. ”There were ten of us who went on the original mission to get the Stones; there should be enough for everyone here for this if you can adjust some of the sizing, Rocket.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, I gotta do everything,” Rocket mutters, waving a paw—hand?

“The bigger problem,” Natasha continues, “is the Pym particles.”

“We don’t have any more in the Avengers facility,” Clint says. “But we do know that the creator of them resumed making them after the Blip to continue helping a girl named Ava Starr. We can either ask Hank Pym for help and hope he gives us what we need, or we can steal them.”

“Steal them,” Rocket says immediately.

Quill: “Definitely steal them.”

“I am Groot.”

“No, you soft-hearted moron, the girl will be fine,” Rocket says derisively to the concerned-looking tree. “He can always make more. _We_ can’t.”

“The rabbit is right,” Thor proclaims. “I believe this an excellent plan, Natasha. I only met Gamora once but I liked her. She was a good Moron. And if this gives me another shot at truly avenging my brother…” Behind her, Clint stiffens, but thankfully says nothing about the mention of Loki. That is a wound that will never heal.

“I have the plans for his lab,” Natasha says, tossing the small drive to Rocket. “If you can display those, we can get to work. Assuming we’re all doing this.”

“I will do whatever necessary to rescue my sister.”

“Yeah.” Quill’s eyes, hard and bright, meet hers. “For Gamora, anything.”

“And, as always, we do what he says,” Rocket mutters, although he doesn’t seem particularly mad about it as he plugs in her drive to one of the ship’s systems, causing a blue hologram of the building they’re going to rob to appear in the center of the room. “He’s the captain.” Another wink.

“Yes, he’s the captain,” Thor says, clapping an unimpressed Quill on the back. “Asgardians of the Galaxy, though, don’t you agree that’s a good name?”

“We’re not all Asgardian,” Quill says in a tight, long-suffering voice. “All right—Groot, Rocket, you’re on disabling the security measures. Nebula, Mantis, you make a plan for taking care of the people inside. _Non-lethally_. Drax…just stay out of it til we need you.”

“I very much look forward to facing Thanos again. For Ovette. For Kamaria…!”

“Yeah, sounds good, buddy. We’ll bring you in when it’s time to attack.” Quill turns away, immediately joining an intense conversation between Rocket and Groot that seems to involve grenades, a catapult, and a plastic eyeball.

“I have a bad feeling about this,” Clint says quietly, stepping up closer to her shoulder.

“They’re the Guardians of the Galaxy,” she replies, only half joking. “What could go wrong?”

Clint humphs. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

“Gamora was fond of them.”

“Yeah, well…never met her either.”

She gives him a smile. “You would’ve liked her.”

“Oh yeah, why?”

“She would remind you of me.”

He stares at her for a second, then allows a small smile to touch his lips. “Only girl on a team full of dysfunctional boys?”

“Not inaccurate,” she laughs. On mutual agreement, she and Clint split up, walking around the various groups of Guardians and adding their input. For Natasha, this means breaking up a small fight between Rocket and Quill over the size of allowable bombs—“Hey! No bombs. These aren’t enemies, these are allies”—“Then why are we stealing from them?”—and conversing with Mantis over whether she would still be able to use her sleep-powers on Scott or Hope if they were on her body in microscopic form.

“I still think you should call and ask Scott,” Clint says to her when they cross paths again. “These guys…non-lethal doesn’t seem to be in their vocabulary.”

“We’ll tone it down in the final plan, and we won’t send anyone in who acts like a ticking time bomb,” Natasha says. The look on Clint’s face makes it clear he thinks this entire team is a ticking time bomb, and, well, he’s not entirely wrong. But she’s worked with Rocket and Nebula for five years, and she thinks she can probably trust Quill and Mantis not to kill anyone either. Thor has a lot of experience not squishing the ‘puny mortals.’ Groot is hard to get a read on, him being a sentient tree and all. “And I did call Scott. He said he wished he could help, but—” She makes quote signs with her fingers. “Captain America told him no.”

“Great,” Clint rubs the back of his neck. “Grand larceny it is.” She squeezes his hand before Rocket catches her eye and beckons her over to discuss smoke bombs.

“They don’t kill anyone, but they’re still bombs.”

“I’m aware of what a smoke bomb is,” Natasha says. “But yes, fine, if it’s necessary…” The raccoon gives her a toothy, not at all reassuring grin. She glances at Thor, who is deep in conversation with an unenthused Nebula. “He looks better.”

Rocket turns to look where she’s looking and then back to Natasha, twisting together the metal parts to something or another with his tiny rodent hands. “Less like melted ice cream? Yeah, well, it’s hard to continually store several kegs of beer on the ship. And he and Quill have this thing going on with a ‘Flexbow’…”

“I’m glad,” Natasha says. “You guys have been good for him.”

“Defeating Thanos was good for him. And I haven’t had to slap him in the face out of a panic attack in about a month, so…”

Her brain tries to flash back to Lila, shaking on a couch, but she shuts that down immediately. “…that is not how you deal with panic attacks.”

“What are you, the expert?” Rocket asks. “Seemed to work pretty good to me.”

She is saved from saying anything else by Quill calling the group back together. “All right. Everyone tell us what they got. Not at the same time.”

“The fastest point of entry to get to the lab where the particles would be stored is this heating grate,” Nebula says, metallic hands pulling at the hologram to zoom in on the correct section of the house.

“If we encounter anyone, I can put them to sleep,” Mantis offers. “They will wake up after we are gone.”

“Good,” Natasha nods at her, praising the non-lethal option. “We should have the element of surprise, so if we’re quick they won’t even have time to put on their suits.”

“And if they’re not…” Rocket lifts up a gun the size of his entire body, electricity crackling on the end.

Natasha heaves a deep breath. “ _Maybe_.” She flicks the blueprints to the next screen to show four faces: Scott Lang, Janet and Hope Van Dyne, and Hank Pym. “These are the people we might encounter who may put up a fight.”

“Hey! You didn’t mention we were robbing the puppy,” Rocket says. “He was a nice puppy. His hair was very fluffy. Much softer than Quill’s.”

“Hey! My hair is soft. And when have you been touching my hair?”

“ _Anyway_ ,” Natasha cuts in. “Do you have a way to disarm the security system?”

“Easy, Terran security,” Rocket says. “Frickin’ humies don’t even know how to protect their stuff. Why ain’t we ever come here to rob the place, Quill?” Not waiting for an answer, he scampers up on a crate so he can reach the hologram. “I’m just gonna need four things—”

“A harbulary battery?” Drax asks.

“No!”

“Dude, _anulax_ ,” Quill says.

“Neither one of those!” Rocket shouts. “The anti-matter saw, the mag-lev clamp, my toolkit, and shaggy-haired emo dude’s vibranium arm.”

“WE ARE NOT FALLING FOR THAT AGAIN,” Quill yells.

“But I need it,” Rocket says, sounding like he’s barely holding back laughter. He glowers at Quill. “ _I’ll get that arm_.”

Clint shoots her another glance, somewhere between ‘are you serious’ and ‘this is gonna go well.’

She sends one back with a quirk of her brow. _Too late now._ And, on second thought, _Trust me_.

Her partner’s gaze softens. _I always do._


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Allied with the (As)Guardians of the Galaxy, Natasha embarks on yet another heist—this time to steal Pym Particles for a trip through space and time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some more Guardians shenanigans for you all ;)

“Rocket, you grab the controls,” Quill says, hitting another few buttons and pushing the navigation console away from him. From the disbelieving look on the raccoon’s face, this isn’t something that occurs often, and the ship shudders slightly in midair as a new pilot takes over. Quill is stone-faced as he heads to the back of the cockpit where Natasha and Clint are standing. “Can I talk to you?” he asks her. His gaze slides sideways to Clint. “Alone?”

“Sure,” she agrees, following him to the back half of the ship. Clint’s watchful gaze is light on her retreating back.

“So, uh, Gamora,” Quill says hesitantly once they’re in a more secluded area. She nods; she never expected him to want to talk to her about anything else. “Is she—is she okay?”

“When I left her,” Natasha says. “And you can’t get hurt in the Soul World. No injuries, no sickness, no one else.”

He brightens. “So she’s safe.” The look on her face must be bad, because his immediately falls. “What aren’t you telling me?”

“Right before Steve came and got me,” she says, choosing her words carefully, “we found something. Gamora called it ‘a pit to the center of this world,’ and we think…we think it’s the final exit from that place.”

“Like…death?” Quill blanches. “But it’s a pit, so it’s a choice, right? She’d have to go in it? Gamora would never do that.”

“I’m not so sure, Peter,” Natasha says gently. “When I got there, she was in a bad state. She had already been there for five years, and then the Snapped showed up. She nearly dismembered me when I arrived because I dared approach your Snapped body. And now she’s alone again…just when she thought she wouldn’t be.”

“She has hope though,” Quill says. The expression on his face is pleading. “She wouldn’t. She couldn’t. She knows I’d come for her.”

“I made her promise not to,” Natasha assures him. “I promised her too. But…” Her eyes fall shut for a moment, envisioning the look on Gamora’s face when they’d first found that pit—the way the orange twilight reflected off her magenta hair, the wild light in her eyes, her toes of her boots balanced right at the edge of the blackness. “We shouldn’t delay.”

“Right. No delays,” Quill says, jaw set with determination. He strides back toward the cockpit. “Rocket! Could you fly any _slower_?” Whatever the raccoon’s angry reply, it is muffled by Thor’s bulk as he emerges from the room just to the right of the cockpit entrance, which Natasha supposes are his quarters. Something catches her eye right right as the door slides shut, and her hand darts out to stop it.

“What is that?” she asks him, pointing at the silver weapon next to his bed.

Thor looks back. “Oh. You remember my hammer, Mjolnir.”

“Yes…I thought Steve was taking that back with him,” Natasha says. “To fix the alternate timelines.”

“Right,” Thor says cheerily. “I stole it back.”

“You…” Natasha shakes her head as Quill announces they’re arriving. “Never mind. We’ll deal with that later.” She walks past him into the cockpit just as the building in question comes into view, far enough below that from the ground the Benatar is no larger than a bird, but some sort of advanced optical scanner allows Quill to zoom in where they need to see. Rocket slips out of his chair and walks past her toward the back of the ship, wearing some sort of bulky vest that Natasha assumes is the ‘aero rig’ he talked about. She and Clint have equipped them all with comms, because for some reason she really doesn’t want to know it appears no one on their team has any, and she follows Rocket to the back of the ship where he fits her in her own set of gear.

“This button to activate the thrusters,” he points. “This button to go left, this one for right. This button to blow yourself up.”

“What?”

The raccoon grins. “You know, if you’re into that sort of thing.” He tightens the straps around her waist, then bangs on the side of the ship. “Anytime, Quill! I would hold on to something.” Next to her, the other members of their infiltration party, Nebula and Mantis, are holding on tight to one of the metal bars of the cargo hold, so Natasha grasps it as well. A second later, the ramp of the Benatar opens, blasting them all with torrents of wind.

“You have not used one of these before?” Nebula asks her over the noise. Natasha shakes her head, and Nebula clips a rope to her chestpiece. Following the length of it through the coils on the floor, she looks up to realize that Nebula has attached Natasha to herself. “So you do not die.”

“Thanks,” she says, oddly touched by the gesture.

“Everyone ready?” Clint asks from up front over the comms.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, get a move on, I don’t need you talkin’ in my ear the whole time anyway,” Rocket mutters, not even bothering to activate his.

“On my signal,” Clint says. “Remember, the entrance we want is on the left side of the house, so aim for that.” Rocket releases the bar he was holding onto and dives off the edge of the ship with a cackle. With a shrug, Mantis follows suit, covering her nose and ears like she would if she were going underwater, and Nebula just shares a look with Natasha.

“Did they just…?” she hears Clint ask.

“Yeah…they don’t really do well with signals,” Quill tells him.

“And they’re headed for the wrong side!”

“Or directions.”

Sighing, Natasha and Nebula walk to the edge of the ramp. She stares down at the land below. Jumping out of a plane is not something new to her, but doing it without a parachute and only an untested bit of raccoon tech strapped to her middle is. “Ready?” Nebula asks. Natasha opens her mouth to reply but the alien is already jumping overboard, dragging Natasha down with her.

* * *

The plan goes about as well as Natasha could have hoped, which is to say, not well at all, but better than she expected. For starters, she does not become a bloody smudge on the Pym-van Dyne roof, and manages to figure out the aero rig on the fly well enough to _maybe_ not have a massive bruise on her tailbone tomorrow. Then of course, there is the matter of sneaking inside—Rocket dismantles the grate and the security well enough, but Mantis accidentally knocks over a tray full of vials of who-knows-what and Nebula reacts to the unexpected clattering noise by electro-batoning the wall, causing a power outage through the entire facility. So much for stealth. They do however find the correct lab where the Pym particles are stored quickly enough, Natasha only once having to physically lift Rocket by the back of his aero rig away from a bit of tech he was trying to swipe.

He is stuffing as many vials of red particles as he can into his rucksack when Natasha sees the slight blur out of the corner of her eye, a black dot zooming into the corner of her vision. “SLEEP,” Mantis shouts, and she turns to see a half-suited Scott Lang tumble to the floor, snoring loudly. A woman pops into existence on Natasha’s other side and Mantis runs at her with both hands extended. “SLEE—”

“Natasha Romanoff?” she asks, and Natasha stops Mantis with a wave of her hand. She nods at the woman with her long brown hair in a tight ponytail wearing an Ant-Man-style suit who can only be Hope van Dyne. “Want to explain?”

“We’re stealing Pym particles,” Natasha says.

Hope crosses her arms. “That I can see.”

“Sorry?”

“To save your friend, right?” Hope says. “The green one. Sorry, that’s what Scott called her.”

“…Yes.”

Hope smiles, then reaches out with her hand to scoop up the last few vials and drops them in Rocket’s bag. “Don’t let me stop you.”

“What?” Natasha asks, staring at her in surprise.

Hope squares her shoulders, a faint smirk clear on her lips. “You sacrificed yourself to bring back the Snapped. Without you I wouldn’t even be here. Consider it a debt paid.”

Natasha holds out her hand and shakes Hope’s. “Thank you.” Winking, Hope miniaturizes again until she is a barely visible speck on the floor, then flies upwards on wasps’ wings to grab the back of Scott’s suit and lift him out of the room, his bare feet dragging along the floor.

“Well, she ruined all the fun,” Rocket says. “It’s no fun stealing if the people living there _help_ you steal it!”

“We are not here for fun,” Nebula says harshly, grabbing the bag of Pym particles from him and striding toward the door.

“HEY BALDY, THOSE ARE MINE!” Rocket yells, scampering after her on all fours.

Mantis nods solemnly to Natasha. “They are Rocket’s. It is the cardinal rule of keepers finders.”

Natasha takes a deep breath, letting it out slowly through her nose. “Come on. Let’s get out of here.”

* * *

The Avengers facility is quiet when they enter it—which is good, because that’s what they are counting on. Steve’s gone, back to the past, and Bruce had only come back long enough to get him there before going back to his post-Snap lab for continued work on regaining the use of his gauntlet-fried arm. Wanda’s in Sokovia still, according to Clint’s not-infrequent text updates, and T’Challa and Strange never used this place as a home base anyway. Sam is really the only wildcard, but according to the news outlets he’s set up shop in New York City in the old Avengers Tower for a bit while this place is repaired. So, they have the facility all to themselves.

Which is good, because as they’d learned on their last mission, the Guardians aren’t really the stealthy types.

Natasha’s flimsy emergency keycard that somehow survived five post-apocalyptic years, the Garden, Morag, Vormir, the Soul World, and time travel gets them in the door even through FRIDAY isn’t operational. Most of the large pieces of rubble have been cleared, but smaller pieces still crunch beneath her boots as she leads the way further inside. Luckily, the way to the storage locker is one of the parts that has already been cleared, as Steve needed access to it for his forays into the past as well. Natasha tugs one side of the heavy steel door open, Nebula the other. The wall is lined with weapons safe on their racks—bows for Clint, her own Widow’s Bites, guns, knives, and tactical gear—but also the Time-Space GPS watches and white suits in one corner.

“Nat,” Clint says in their ears. “Found the quantum rig.”

“How damaged is it?”

“Pretty wrecked. Looks like he went more Hulk on it than Bruce. Rocket up for it?”

The raccoon looks at her, then rummages through the leather-looking bag slung across his body. He holds up some sort of device. “Oh, I’m up for it, humie. You can’t see this, but what I’m holding here is space tech. Or, magic, to you primitives.” He waves the device in the air. “I once rebuilt an entire half spaceship with this thing, thanks to Quill’s bad flying.”

Quill narrows his eyes and moves toward the raccoon but Natasha steps in between them. “All right, sounds good,” she says. “Rocket, head up to where Clint is and start fixing it up. We’ll fit people into suits down here and see which ones need altering.” Rocket waves a rodent hand before shoving the device back in the bag and trudging off toward the stairs, Clint presumably giving him directions through the facility’s wreckage on a direct channel.

“Okay,” Natasha says, stepping forward and examining the suits on the rack. Hers is already stowed on the Benatar, as she wore it off Vormir to the Barton Farm, but Clint’s is hanging there still, so she sets it aside for him, and Thor’s and Nebula’s original suits as well. “Grab one that looks like it’ll fit,” she says, gesturing at the rest of them.

“I want Captain America’s,” Quill says immediately, striding up to the rack. He puffs out his chest. “It’ll fit the best.”

“That depends,” Drax says. “Is America a dude, or a man?”

“Ooh! I saw him during battle,” Mantis says. “He is definitely a man.”

Drax shrugs. “Sorry, Quill.”

“Actually, Steve took his back with him,” Natasha cuts in. “Maybe I’ll just…” She grabs the first one off the rack, then stares down at the tag: _Tony Stark_. She swallows, then hands it to Mantis. “Tony was pretty short. Try this on.”

“I am short?” Mantis questions, but Natasha has already turned back to the rack, eyes stinging.

“It is good,” Drax tells her. “You will avoid being decapitated by doorways with your useless antenna.”

She tosses the largest of them all at Drax. “It looks small,” the alien says, holding it up.

“Dude, it is wider than you are,” Quill says, looking at him exasperatedly.

“I fear for my nipples.”

“Just put it on!” Quill yells. Ignoring them, Natasha throws Scott’s suit at Groot, then goes looking for Rhodey’s for Quill before realizing that it had simply been a modified version of his War Machine armor, and thus he still had it.

“Shoot. There’s not enough,” she says. “We’ll have to fabricate a whole new—”

“We will not,” Nebula tells her, reaching out one thin, cybernetic arm to grab the suit from Groot and shove it at Quill. She picks up her own from the set-aside pile and hands it to the adolescent tree. “I will not be coming.”

“What?” Natasha asks.

“You’re not going to help?” Quill demands. “Are you serious? GAMORA WOULD DO THIS FOR YOU IN A HEARTBEAT, YOU—”

“I am not coming,” Nebula repeats harshly, shoving Quill away from her hard enough that he stumbles backwards, crashing into a wall of thankfully unarmed grenades. “I would only be a liability.”

“Please, explain,” Natasha says, trying to keep the peace.

“I was the reason Thanos was able to discover us the first time. The neural network that houses my processing, my memories—Thanos replaced my organic brain long ago so that he could review them at his leisure. But the network was only designed for one.”

“And so, when there were two Nebulas in 2014—”

“They traced the signal, and captured me. If I go with you, I will only reveal our presence to my father,” Nebula says. She casts her gaze toward the floor. “I will not get my revenge.”

Silence greets her statement. Natasha mourns the loss of another good fighter on this mission, and one of the more level-headed ones at that, but she cannot deny the sense in what the blue alien says.

“We’ll get it for you,” Quill says, as contrite as Natasha has ever seen him, looking Nebula straight in the eyes. “And we’ll get Gamora back too.”

Natasha nods. “Gamora is the mission.” One by one, all of the Guardians and Thor nod. “All right. Let’s check on Rocket and Clint. We’re almost ready to do this.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you liked it! Any and all feedback/suggestions/theories appreciated, as always :)


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gamora deals with being on her own. Meanwhile, Natasha, Clint, and the (As)Guardians embark to Vormir, 2018.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry in advance for the angst. Some decently heavy trigger warnings are at the bottom; please take a look if that's helpful to you!
> 
> Here we go.

_“They’re not for him.”_

_Realization dawns on her once again, that horrible sweeping sensation in her stomach that tingles outward toward her toes. “No. This isn’t love.” One does not kidnap, or torture, or brutalize, or enslave someone they_ love _. He has done all that to her and more. It has taken her more than a year after escaping him to pick up the pieces of herself, to fit them back together into a jagged whole. To find herself able to love Peter, an eternal surprise for one cultivated only for death and destruction. Thanos, of all beings, is not capable of love. He can’t be._

_“I ignored my destiny once,” her father says. “I cannot do that again. Even for you.”_

_Her reflexes are lightning-fast as she snatches the dagger from his belt, finger pressing down on the ruby to extend the blades. Gamora barely has a moment to process her own actions before the knife plunges toward her, guided by her own hand, the blade sinking fast into the taut skin of her stomach—a mortal wound—_

_But the pain does not come. She opens her hands to see only bubbles, flashing her back to_ his _face, pleading, desperate. Her own words:_ “I love you. More than anything.”

_Thanos grabs her arm, and his grip is iron, no matter how much she kicks and struggles, dragging her inexorably toward the edge. She cannot get away, she cannot do anything except fall, and mourn, and know that Thanos will win, and it will have been all her fault._

Gamora wakes up just before she hits the bottom, breathing fast and wracked with the desire to kill herself. For a moment she expects to feel the soft, warm hands of Natasha at her back, turning her over, calming her with whispered reassurances, but then she remembers that she is once again alone, and that feeling comes back all the stronger. She sits up in the bed instead, casting off the rough blanket, and focuses on wrestling that emotion down. Her fingers drift to the double-sided knife at her bedside table, blood-red ruby glinting in the faint orange glow that still sneaks through under the reeds of the door. She holds it in her hand, then balances it on her forefinger, hearing the sounds of her people being slaughtered. She twists her fingers, catching it nimbly in her fist, and then drives one sharp point toward her abdomen, watching it sink to the hilt.

There is no pain; there is never pain in the Soul World. Gamora never thought she would miss pain.

She can no more end her life with this blade here than when she was in Thanos’s clutches, but it still gives her some sort of sick satisfaction to try.

The knife slides out of her just as easily as it went in, the clean blade wavering and translucent until it leaves contact with her body. She sets it on the table again, then takes a deep breath and forces herself to focus on other things. Gamora runs a hand through her hair and wonders if she has the willpower to braid it today.

She doesn’t. Just like she didn’t the day before, or the day before that, or the day before that…

When Natasha had first left, it had been easier, the woman’s words ringing in her ears. _“I will come back for you. I’ll find a way to get you out too. I promise.”_ Gamora followed the same routine they had both fallen into, watering the plants, tending to the farm, exploring in the afternoon and taking her knife to bits of wood in the evening, using the blade to create rather than kill. At first, she didn’t even think about it. _“You have to promise me you’ll wait for me. That you won’t use the pit.”_

Every day, Gamora keeps that promise. And every day, every nightmare, every realization that there is no relief in waking because the nightmare continues except worse because it is _real_ —it gets harder.

Some days she rages at the grasses, her sword carving deep gouges into the soil.

Some days she doesn’t rise from their bed at all.

Those are the good days.

The bad days, she walks to the place she promised not to go. She sits, and stares into the inky blackness, or else paces around the rim of it, almost daring herself to see how close she can go. _Jump_ , her mind tells her. _Escape. Let it end._ But somehow she manages to pick herself up at the end of the day, go back to their silent farm, their empty house, their cold bed.

After all—she can always return tomorrow.

* * *

In the end, it takes Rocket and his space-magic gadgets four days to fix the Quantum Tunnel rig. Natasha and the others spend those days hashing out the details of the plan, running through it with every member of the team until they can say it in their sleep, and otherwise eating crappy takeout that Quill keeps having delivered, somehow having discovered the wonders of UberEats, Dorito-flavored taco shells, and Stroopwafel McFlurrys.

On day three, Natasha pulls Clint aside and asks him to go out and buy her a goddamn salad. He comes back with pizza, because he’s Clint like that, but at least hers has broccoli on top. They also do their final video-call with the kids and Laura in the privacy of Natasha’s old room in the compound, which remarkably survived the destruction. Better than she had, anyway. The call is a lot of sad, scared faces and trembling lips, but no one cries, and Natasha counts that as a win. It ends with a lot of requests that they will eventually get to meet Gamora, who has been elevated to some sort of badass mythical hero in their eyes, which they agree to without specifying a timeframe. They both also each record a video à la Tony Stark, something Natasha tries not to think too hard about but knows is necessary, in case of the worst. It is agreed among the entire team that any one of them will die before allowing Thanos back into their time. The video they do cry for, not in front of the camera but afterward, curled up and holding each other on top of Natasha’s bed.

The day Rocket announces it’s finished, they all suit up and carefully take their vials of Pym particles from Rocket’s bag. There’s nineteen vials in total, plus two extra from when they had planned on Nebula accompanying them—enough for one trip there and back for each of them plus the Benatar, and one for Gamora. Natasha, Quill, and Nebula fixed some of Tony’s robotics setup enough to manufacture another suit after Nebula pointed out the fact that her sister won’t have one in case they end up taking her back on this trip, and it is packed in the Benatar for use once they get her out of the Soul World. However, a scenario like that would imply killing Thanos, and killing Thanos is not the plan.

When everyone is ready, Natasha gathers them into a circle next to the steps up to the repaired quantum rig. “If we’re going to do this—”

“If?” Rocket says. “I didn’t do all that work for this to still be an _if_.”

She quells the raccoon with a glance, a power that Quill still looks jealous of. “If we’re going to do this, we’re going to do it smart.”

“Are you saying we aren’t smart?” Quill asks.

“She is right,” Mantis says knowledgeably. “We are not smart.”

“I am Groot!” Groot says, waving his video game.

“I’m not saying that! But I did talk to Peter about what happened on Titan,” Natasha says.

“What? You never talked to me—”

“Not you, Quill, the other Peter,” she says. “Spider-Man.” Every single one of them except Clint and Nebula gives her a blank look. “The kid in the red and blue suit doing acrobatics?”

“Ohhh,” Quill says. “Yeah, we never caught his name.”

“Anyway, what I’m trying to say is we need to be unified,” she continues. “Everyone needs to follow the plan. No revenge—” She looks directly at Quill, Drax, Thor, and even Nebula for good measure. “—no surprises—” Rocket.“—no going off-book.”

“Yeah, wouldn’t want to accidentally unBlip half the universe,” Quill mutters.

“We are two-time galaxy-savers, not complete morons,” Rocket tells her irritably.

“And Nat is a one-time _universe_ saver, and that’s a lot bigger, so you listen up,” Clint says.

Thor merely looks confused. “But you _are_ Morons.”

“ENOUGH,” Nebula shouts. Her eyes drift to each of them in turn. “My sister is waiting.”

Rocket looks at Natasha. “The other guy had a longer speech. More motivational, too.”

She rolls her eyes, then mounts the stairs. “Well, Steve didn’t keep getting interrupted.” They fan out in a large circle, Clint at her side as always and Thor on the other, clutching his hammer in one hand and his axe in the other. Across from her, Drax is tugging at the front of his suit and Rocket holds the already miniaturized Benatar. Mantis has her hands clenched at her sides, and even Groot has put away his video game for the occasion. That or he just didn’t want to risk losing it somewhere in the Quantum Realm.

Only Nebula remains apart, standing at the base of the rig. She gives Natasha a small nod. Natasha activates her helmet, then lifts her wrist, and the mixture of Guardians and Avengers do the same. “See you in a minute.”

* * *

Vormir circa 2018 slams up into her feet, knocking her off balance slightly and causing her to stumble. A few droplets of water wet her fingers, her calves halfway submerged. Around her, everyone else is much the same, and she does a quick headcount as their helmets retract back into their suits automatically. Good. They all made it.

“ _See you in a minute?_ ” Clint hisses at her with a scowl. “Really?”

“Better than ‘whatever it takes,’” Natasha says, and he visibly flinches a little. Too late, she realizes her mistake. “Hey.” She lays a hand on his arm. “Hey, I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine.” She doesn’t really believe him until he takes her hand and squeezes it, the look in his eyes softening.

“Sorry,” she says again, and means it.

“Hey, lovebirds,” Rocket calls. “We ain’t gettin’ any younger here, and Thanos ain’t getting any more dead.”

Natasha releases his hand and goes to join the others where they’ve circled up, Clint following. “I have a wife,” he tells Rocket as they take their places.

The raccoon looks up at him. “Yeah, and?”

Natasha cuts across them before he can reply. “Clint, you’re supposed to be showing us where Thanos will wake up with the Stone. Lead the way.”

Clint nods, looking up at the sky and then turning in a slow circle, getting his bearings. The others who have never been to Vormir—which is all of them—are doing much the same, taking in the seemingly endless water, the rippled purple sand, and the faraway cliffs, covered in snow. “This way,” Clint says, beginning to splash his way in that direction. They follow until he calls to stop, staring down at the water. “Here.”

“You sure, mohawk?” Rocket asks. “Looks the same as every other bit of water on this rock.”

Clint’s jaw clenches. “I’m sure.”

“Okay,” Natasha says, turning to Quill. “Are you sure you’re ready for this?”

“I’m ready,” the man replies tightly. He taps the button on his suit that makes it melt away, revealing his Star-Lord gear underneath.

“No matter what you see, you can’t interfere,” she reminds him.

“I know what I signed up for.”

“I’ll be with him,” Clint says, moving to stand next to Quill. “I’ll make sure everything goes according to plan on our end.”

To Natasha’s surprise, Mantis throws her arms around Quill. “You are scared,” she tells him, antennae glowing at the tips.

Quill swallows. “Yeah. Yeah, I am.” All of a sudden Drax is hugging Quill, and then Groot.

“Why is he getting hugs?” Rocket asks. “He’s not the moron about to face four-Infinity-Stone Thanos. What’s he got to be scared of?”

“I am Groot,” Groot says, glaring at Rocket.

“Thanks, Groot,” Quill says, some of his posture relaxing. “It’ll be okay, guys. Follow the plan. Do what Natasha says. And when we all see each other again, we’ll be able to rescue Gamora.”

Natasha nods. “Something goes wrong, you hit your button, and you get out back to 2023,” she reminds them. “No risking Thanos getting his hands on any Pym particles.” Clint pulls her toward him, resting his forehead against hers briefly. “No trying to hurl yourself off any cliffs,” she tells him quietly.

“You either.” It’s as close to saying what they really want to say as they’re going to get, so they release each other and step back.

“You done this before?” Quill asks Clint, grasping him tightly around the middle.

“Believe it or not, yes.”

Quill’s rocket boots activate, blasting them off through the air toward the cliffs. _Clench up, Legolas_ , she thinks to herself, and a small smile touches her lips. It’s gone by the time she turns to face the team again. They position themselves in a large semi-circle, waiting for the call from Quill or Clint via the comm nestled in each of their ears. Sending Quill to watch Gamora die via the hands of her genocidal father figure isn’t the best choice Natasha’s made on this little venture, but he had insisted, and after what had happened on Titan, she was counting on it being better to have his hot head as far away from Thanos as possible during the battle.

“We see him,” Quill whispers in her ear. “He has Gamora. He…” Natasha shuts her eyes, seeing it in her head despite herself. The Red Skull, floating and ethereal. The cliff’s edge, icy wind blowing across it. The purple sky, that one fiery sliver of another planet above them. Gamora, her implants shining silver like the snow, her arm gripped in one giant hand, screaming as she is thrown over the side…

“Get ready,” Clint says. His voice is dead, flat, and Natasha wishes once again that he hadn’t had to be the one visiting that accursed place again, reliving what he never should have had to live in the first place. “…She’s over.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Trigger Warnings:**  
>  Suicide ideation/miming, aka a suicidal character goes through the motions of killing themselves despite knowing that only due to their specific circumstance will it not work
> 
> Hope you liked it!! Any and all feedback appreciated, and I'll try not to keep you waiting *too* long for the next chapter :)


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thanos Fight, round 7. (Seventh time’s the charm, right?)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sooooo...I'm just gonna let you get right to it with this one.

Thunder rumbles in the distance, great white lights shooting upward into the sky centered over the cliffs. A dark hole opens up in the clouds, and, shading her eyes, Natasha thinks she can just make out a large figure being drawn up into it under the wind.

“Here we go!” she shouts, as if any of them need to hear it. Then there is a _boom_ that has her clasping her hands over her ears, the very earth rumbling underneath their feet. A brilliant beam shoots down from the sky toward exactly where they’re standing, and all Natasha has time to think is that it looks a bit like the opening of the Bifrost before she is blasted backward into the air.

The water, cold and unforgiving, impacts her chest first. It probably saved her life, Natasha thinks vaguely, dazed and floating among silt and sand, before she remembers use of her limbs and is able to surge upward, flailing. The water is only a foot and a half deep but tastes strongly of minerals as she spits out a mouthful of it. Her legs shake a bit when she tries to stand, but they hold, and she looks frantically around, trying to understand what happened.

Have they already failed?

Nearby, other members of the team are in various stages of rising as well, disoriented and, in Drax’s case, bleeding heavily on one side of the head. In the center of the blast radius is the large, hulking form of Thanos, half-submerged almost peacefully in the water. The only sign of the blast is the circular ripple extending outward from where he had landed. A bit of golden light peeks out from within his closed palm.

Natasha sprints for it, her feet splashing through the waves much more loudly than can really be considered stealthy. On the other side, Thor is also making for Thanos, a snarl on his face and Stormbreaker and Mjolnir gripped tightly in each hand. The Asgardian makes it there first by a few scant seconds, raising Stormbreaker above his head and swinging it downward with all his might just as Natasha’s fingers graze across Thanos’s palm. One more second, and they can all go home.

They don’t have one more second.

The hand in front of Natasha jerks upward, clipping her under the chin. Stormbreaker’s silver, honed edge falls, sinking into the Titan’s flesh just below the shoulder. Natasha slams into the water hard on her ass, gravel digging into her palms. The large purple hand holding the Soul Stone catches Thor’s arm, holding him back from bringing the motion to completion, then just backhands him across the face with one closed fist, sending him flying. He crashes into Mantis, who was just running up, and Natasha scrambles backward on both hands. This was not how this was supposed to go.

Thanos stands slowly, droplets running off the seams of his golden armor, which glows slightly in Vormir’s strange twilight. His gauntlet arm hangs at an awkward, half-severed angle from his shoulder as he wrenches Stormbreaker out of it, casting the axe aside. Purple ichor flows from the grievous wound, splashing into the water, but the Titan only growls, ripping something from the gauntlet hanging uselessly at his side and closing his fist around it. There’s a brief shimmer of red light, and the gaping hole disappears, his arm fully functional again, fingers flexing in their golden metal sheath.

Natasha springs up, using the top of his own greaves as a jumping-off point with a knife in hand, and buries it in his eye socket. Thanos bellows, both hands immediately rising to his face as Natasha scrambles out of range again. Then Drax comes in out of nowhere, brandishing two long, wickedly curved knives and starts shredding maniacally at the Titan’s breastplate. A tiny, ruby red gem slips out from between the Titan’s fingers as he staggers backwards, dropping into the water with a small _plink_.

_Wrong Stone_ , Natasha thinks, but all the same, it’s one less to deal with. Then Thanos closes his fist against Drax’s onslaught and a wave of purple-tinged power sends them all flying again. The purple, whatever it is, burns her skin when it touches it, makes her muscles go weak and numb and lifeless until she is slamming face-first into the water again. Her vision shorts out briefly, and this is when panic sets in, because who were they to think they could win against something like this?

When she finally manages to drag herself upwards again, faint tendrils of purple still searing at her skin, Thor is back in the fight, going toe-to-toe with Thanos. The combination of both Mjolnir and Stormbreaker are enough to block a blast from the Power Stone if he can get them up fast enough, but that’s not the only trick up Thanos’s sleeve, unfortunately, even if he is without a conventional weapon. Rocket stands a few feet away cackling and lobbing grenades at the Titan’s backside that adhere for a few seconds before detonating directly against his skin, but they appear to affect their adversary no more than a bee sting. He has wrenched out Natasha’s knife from his eye at some point along the way as well, and both it and his hacked chest plate courtesy of Drax leak violet ichor, but neither seem to be slowing him down.

It can’t end this way.

Natasha gets to her feet on shaky limbs.

They cannot fail.

Worse, they cannot fail to get the Stone and give Thanos another chance at Snapping his fingers, which is exactly what they’ll do if he gets his hands on any of their Pym particles and realizes what they can do.

Her hand hovers over the second button on her Time-Space GPS cuff, the one the rest of them don’t have. The one that will activate all the others if she presses it, sweeping them all away back to 2023.

_Bring back what we lost? I hope. Keep what I found? I have to, at all costs._

It’s the smart play.

_We don’t trade lives._

She should do it.

Her hand clenches into a fist. _Gamora_.

She drops into a crouch instead, surveying the battlefield while she waits for her head to clear. Thor slams Mjolnir down through the water on top of the Titan’s foot, leaving it there, and takes advantage of Thanos’s momentary confused immobility to slash at the gauntlet with Stormbreaker. Rocket fires off another three grenades and switches to some sort of large energy weapon that is equally underpowered against their foe. Sweeping Mjolnir up again, Thor bashes him across the face.

_Where is the Soul Stone?_ Natasha questions, drawing her sidearm. _Is it still in his hand?_

Unfortunately, when weaponless it is very normal to fight with a closed fist.

“I’m going to try something,” Mantis’s sweet voice echoes in her ear. She knows the others hear her too, as Rocket immediately stops blasting and allows her to sneak up from behind without risking crossfire, empathic arms outstretched. Thanos must sense something’s wrong, though, allowing Stormbreaker to slash him across the leg and closing his gauntleted fist again instead. A deep blue portal opens up just behind his back and Mantis slams right into it—no, through it. A terrified scream pierces Natasha’s ears and she looks up to see another portal opening up some hundred yards to the right, a thousand feet up, and Mantis’s small body free-falling down from it.

Groot bellows in anger—where has he been all this time?—and runs at Thanos, brown vines wrapping around the Titan’s legs. Rocket shoots upward into the sky using his aero rig to catch her, and Natasha knows in her heart of hearts that they’re losing, even as she empties an entire mag into the madman’s chest while she has a momentary clear shot.

“Get the Stone!” she yells as loud as she can, forgetting the comms for a moment. Drax shouts something indistinguishable about his wife and daughter and rejoins the fray as Natasha, desperate, contemplates going for the Reality Stone, still lost somewhere underneath the waves. Even if she finds it, can she wield it? Or will it burn through her for even trying?

Thunder booms overhead, another lightning strike from Thor. Thanos staggers, dazed for a moment, then growls and fights back with renewed vigor, ducking attacks from Drax’s knives and kicking his legs out from under him. The resultant distraction gives him just enough time to raise his fist as Thor calls down a third lightning strike, Mjolnir raised high in the air, and Natasha watches as a wave of purple-tinted power rises up to meet it. The two explode against each other, or rather fuse somewhere in the middle, but either way all three of them get blasted away from him.

“I just gave up everything to retrieve this Stone…” Thanos bellows at them all, the Soul Stone glittering golden in the light as he raises it, tucked between his thumb and forefinger. “ _My Gamora_ … And you think to _take_ it from me?” He lifts the gauntlet, preparing to add the fourth stone. Natasha doesn’t know if Soul has any powers of its own to add to his arsenal like Power, Space, and Reality, but she is sure she doesn’t want to find out.

_Ping!_ Thanos stops, looking down at the small black arrow sprouting out of his breastplate, and Natasha grins at the nonsensical wave of relief washing over her.

“Miss me?” Clint asks in her ear, only her ear. Star-Lord swoops down from overhead, Clint’s legs clamped tight around his back like an overgrown koala bear, and smashes the Titan in the face with both rocket blasters on his feet. Clint tumbles safely from his back into the water in a perfect barrel roll right before Quill zooms back upward.

“Barton! Quill!” Thor leaps back into the fight with renewed vigor, battered but not out for the count yet.

“For Gamora, ass-face!” Quill shouts, peppering the Titan with energy blasts as he dives in for another round.

The Stones glow, then water erupts around Thanos: dirt and rock sluice that rises in a tidal wave to envelop Star-Lord out of thin air and drags him under. Thor gets blasted full to the face mid-swing, Mjolnir and Stormbreaker flung backwards through the air as he splashes, spread-eagled in the water. Uncontrolled, Mjolnir shoots right by her, close enough that Natasha ducks instinctively, strands of red hair that have escaped her braid whipped in her face by the speed of it. Thanos gets an arrow up one nostril—that’s her Clint—then snorts flames as it explodes inside of his nasal cavity. A giant hand grabs Clint from where he’s crouched, bow and another explosive arrow in hand, lifting him clear off the ground by the neck. Thor’s hands open below him to call back his weapons, a brief metallic sound in the wind before Mjolnir and Stormbreaker have reversed course and shot back toward him.

Clint’s wide eyes meet hers, his legs kicking ineffectually at the dark water below him, light splashes the only result of his struggling. The bow and arrow fall from his grasp, his fingers darting to scrabble ineffectually at the purple ones closing around his throat.

_This is monsters and magic and nothing we were ever trained for._

Mjolnir whips past her, speeding back to Thor.

She doesn’t know what possesses her to do it. Grab ahold of the handle, hitch a ride, maybe, anything to get closer to Clint—but the moment her fingers close around the water-slicked leather grip a reverberation echoes through her entire body, a single, clean note ringing through her mind. A moment later, energy surges through her, washing away the battle fatigue and soothing the burn of her muscles. Scrapes and bruises close up and disappear, the pain fading like a long-forgotten dream. She is twenty-one and staring at an archer a rooftop away and in her physical prime again, or more.

Mjolnir stops in midair.

No, _Natasha_ stops it, the hammer’s weight in her palm no more than if it was made of foam, except it is solid and steady and _weighty_ in another aspect rather than physical. She raises it slowly, wonderingly, the crackle of thunder far off in the distance.

Then she is running at Thanos, straight across the water, and it is less like running than loping, every touchdown of her foot below the waves propelling her two or three times further than it should have, until her feet are barely touching the ground at all and it is Mjolnir slinging her forward. The effort of holding onto the hammer’s handle is nonexistent despite carrying all of her body weight behind it as she flies through the air.

Then, with one smooth adjustment of her grip, she plants her feet and swings it at his giant, grape-like head.

There is satisfaction as it cracks against his skull—not breaking it, of course not, but she hopes it hurts all the same. It’s enough to get him to drop Clint, at least, and Natasha points Mjolnir at the sky the way she’s seen Thor do and _calls_ , the electricity singing in her blood. Lightning surges downward before she can really think about exactly how _close_ she’s standing to her target, but the blinding white flash that envelops the both of them doesn’t hurt in the slightest, bringing with it the scent of ozone and maybe a hint of singed hair. Armor ripples across her body, dark and accented red—did she mean to do that?—and her arms surge with power as she brings the hammer down again, this time across his chestplate.

The golden carapace cracks, riddled with fissures as it was already from Drax and Thor’s combined efforts. It falls to the ground in two large fragments. “Natasha…” Clint breathes from somewhere behind her, but there’s no time to look back at him. Thor comes up beside her, eyes sparkling and hefting Stormbreaker.

She dodges Thanos’s first beam of light from the Power Stone simply by ducking underneath it with reflexes she wouldn’t have thought possible if she hadn’t just done it. Other things are different as well, although she doesn’t have time to catalogue them all as Thanos lets off another blast. It’s as if her eyesight is keener too, although the Red Room had insured hers was always perfect. She can see the minutiae now, the fine details, the tiny grooves in his skin that are the first to tense when he moves. She spots an opening and slams Mjolnir down again, the action as effortless as any others she has taken. Thanos’s forearm shatters on impact, his eyes bulging and his fingers uncurling to reveal the Soul Stone still nestled within. She reaches for it, but Rocket is faster, running in on four limbs and grabbing it out of his hand before scampering away again.

“We’ve got the Stone, let’s go!” she shouts, but is momentarily stymied from hitting her own Time-Space GPS by the large hammer in her hand. Rocket immediately winks out of existence with the Stone, followed by Groot and Mantis.

“No,” Drax says, running up from behind, knives out. “For Ovette!”

Thanos smites Natasha across the chest. White hot pain flares outward from where the beam struck, blasting her off her feet. She is briefly aware that she is flying, then falling, feeling as if her very soul is on fire. Somewhere, Clint is shouting her name. She shudders as she tries to remember how to breathe, right in time to splash down into the water of Vormir and inhale a mouthful of bubbles. For a moment, she can only float there, violet tendrils pulsing through her veins.

“For Kamaria!” she hears Drax call, as if from very far away. “For _Natasha_!”

_“I’m not dead,”_ Natasha wants to say, and she’s at least pretty sure that’s true. Instead, she forces herself to sit up and spit out even more water, nearly puking it all over Clint, who has suddenly appeared beside her.

“Oh thank god,” he says, and she doesn’t think it’s about the missed puke.

“YOU KILLED HER!” Quill screams, and Natasha knows he isn’t talking about herself. “ _YOU KILLED HER WHOLE PLANET, AND YOU KILLED HER!_ ” She tries to look at what is going on, but Clint keeps her face cupped towards him, checking her for injury.

“I’m fine,” she tells him, and it’s not even a lie. The pain is fading, her breaths coming easier, her heart rate calming again.

“You are,” Clint says, looking somewhat dazed. He nods toward the hammer in her hand. “You took a full blast from the Power Stone. Guess it’s a good thing you’re worthy.” He helps her to her feet, though miraculously she doesn’t quite need it anymore. “Are you… _taller_?” Clint gapes. “You look taller.” Her lips quirk upward as she raises the hammer toward the sky, and lightning flashes down on Thanos again, perfectly timed with Thor’s sweep of Stormbreaker. The gigantic axe buries itself deep in the Titan’s chest, and Thanos falls to his knees, an eerie silence falling over the battlefield. Star-Lord fires two more times at the Titan’s head, and Drax hacks off his gauntlet-arm for good measure, kicking the limb away.

But Thanos is dead.

It doesn’t feel real. That they’ve done it. They _did_ it.

Quill sinks to his knees beside the body, and as she gets closer she can see that his eyes are red, his cheeks tear-stained. Thor doesn’t look much better, his frizzy blonde hair sticking out every which way. He looks up at the star-spattered sky, muttering, “ _The sun will shine on us again, brother,_ ” before falling silent, dropping to squat halfway in the water and wiping his own cheeks with a bit of his soiled red cape.

Natasha kneels next to Quill, putting a hand on his shoulder. “We did it,” she tells him. “We won.”

“Doesn’t feel like it,” Peter whispers, still staring at Thanos’s limp body.

“It will,” she promises him. “When we get her back.” His eyes lift to meet hers, blue meeting green, and the barest hint of a smile graces his face.

“When we get her back,” he echoes. “ _Gamora_.” She points at the Time-Space GPS on his wrist. “Meet you at the Compound.” He nods, still slightly dazed, and presses the button. His helmet snaps back over his face an instant before he disappears with a loud _pop!_

“What should we do with these?” Clint asks, hailing her over. He kicks Thanos’s arm over with his boot, turning the gauntlet face-up. The Power and Space stones glitter at her, each surrounded by its own tiny nebula of flickering light.

“Leave them,” Natasha says. “We already created a branch timeline by killing Thanos, and bringing them back to Earth will only risk them getting stolen, and used.”

Clint nods sharply, tugging the gauntlet off anyway. “I’ll bury it then.”

“Reality Stone’s already somewhere around here anyway,” Natasha agrees. She looks over to Thor, considering, then walks toward him with slow movements and touches him gently on the back. “You did it. He’s dead.”

“I know he’s dead,” Thor says, still staring at the ground. “I thought it would feel…different. Like it should after a battle we reign victorious, having taken no losses. Like it did in the feasting halls.”

“This isn’t quite a feasting hall,” Natasha says. “But give it time.” She holds out the hammer, and Thor takes it, that strange metallic sound whistling through the air again. The moment the hammer is no longer touching her skin, the energy leaves her, the world becomes darker, less crystalline. It isn’t fatigue, exactly, just…humanity. A lack of godliness. “Thank you, Lady Natasha,” Thor says, inclining his head to her. Then he too presses the button on his suit and disappears back to the Compound.

Sighing, Natasha stands up straight to find Clint watching her, the gauntlet already nowhere to be seen. “You didn’t have to wait,” Natasha says, though she knows his answer anyway.

“Like I’m going anywhere without you.”

She takes one last look—the stars, the planet, the snowy cliffs, Thanos’s dead body lying in water, his chest scarred into oblivion and his head dented and ashen—as she upturns her wrist in preparation. “It’s just like Budapest all over again,” she tells Clint.

They hit their buttons at the same time.

“You and I remember Budapest very differently.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Writing battle scenes with a ton of characters is _hard _, guys. Let me know how I did :)__
> 
> __Andddd... *whispers* Natasha is worthy._ _


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Soul Stone in hand, Operation Rescue Gamora is a go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's my birthday, so I guess I have a gift for you all - me finally updating this fic!! My apologies for the long absence, _Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D._ ended and took my heart with it, so my writing-brain has been decidedly _elsewhere_ recently. 
> 
> Hope you enjoy :)

Natasha staggers, then orients herself on the platform, hitting the button to retract her helmet. The cool, dusty air of the Compound hits her in the face and she breathes deep, gulping breaths of it, not having realized right until this moment how much more she enjoys it than the icy, eerie stuff of Vormir. The rest of her team seems similarly relieved to be back, helmets slowly lowering as they look around in wonder.

“Did you do it?” a voice demands from below. Nebula looks up at them, a hunger visible deep in her black eyes.

“One Soul Stone accounted for,” Rocket says, holding it up. The Soul Stone glows faintly with a golden nimbus, and Quill approaches him with pure longing written on his face. Rocket drops the Stone in his open palm and Quill’s fingers close around it, tears filling his eyes as he presses it close to his chest.

“Thanos is also dead,” Natasha tells Nebula, who she knows will appreciate the information. “In that timeline, at least.”

The corners of Nebula’s lips curve upward. “I shall imagine his final moments with much joy.”

“…You do that,” Clint nods.

“Everyone else, rest up,” Natasha tells them. “If you need medical, it’s upstairs…or what’s left of it.”

“When are we leaving?” Quill asks her, still cradling the Stone.

_Right now_ , Natasha wants to say, but she bites her tongue.

“Give us an hour or two to recover,” Clint says when she fails to. “Natasha and I have a phone call to make; people need to get patched up. Then the three of us will go.”

Quill looks at Natasha for confirmation—he wants to zip back to Vormir immediately just as much as she does; she can see it in his eyes—and then nods. With one look at Clint to confer, Natasha and Clint head down off the platform as the rest of their team began to disperse as well, heading for Natasha’s old quarters. Clint has his phone in his hand ready and waiting by the time they get there, dialing Laura’s number as soon as the door shuts behind them.

She picks up immediately. “Clint?”

“Hey, Laura,” he says.

“You and Nat—are you—?”

“We’re fine,” Natasha assures her, knowing Laura will want to hear both of their voices, just to be sure. “We got the Stone.”

“Oh thank God,” Laura says, choking back something that might have been a sob or a laugh, or quite possibly both.

“The dangerous part should be over,” Clint tells her. “We just have to return the Stone and get Gamora back, but Steve came back fine, so…”

“Kids!” Laura calls, the loudness of her voice causing the microphone to screech slightly. She can hear shouts of “Mom!” and “Is that Dad and Auntie Nat?” in the background, along with the pounding of several pairs of feet.

“Dad? Auntie Nat?”

“We’re here,” Clint says, a broad smile breaking over his face at the sound of Cooper’s voice.

“I knew you could do it!”

“Was Thanos mad?”

“Was it scary?”

“Did you kill him?”

Natasha glances at Clint. “It was a little scary,” she says. Less so Thanos himself—she’s been kicked around and made to feel helpless by monsters and magic before—and more the possibility of opening themselves up for a second Snap, but the kids didn’t need to know that.

“We didn’t ask if Thanos was mad,” Clint says with a smile. “But probably.”

“But is he dead?” Lila wants to know, a slight tremor to her voice.

“Yeah. We killed him,” Natasha confirms. “He can’t hurt anyone anymore in that timeline either.”

“That’s so cool!” Nate says. “You guys did it when _Captain America_ and everyone else couldn’t!”

Natasha shares an amused look with Clint. “Well, we were very lucky. We caught him alone, and by surprise. He didn’t have any weapons besides the gauntlet, and he wasn’t even wearing his full armor.”

“Don’t be modest, Dad, Auntie Nat,” Nate tells them. “We all know it was awesome, even if you won’t admit it.”

“Okay, it was a little awesome,” Clint allows. “I shot an explosive arrow up Thanos’s nose.”

“Whoa!”

“Dad!”

“And Auntie Nat held Thor’s hammer.” The smile drops off her face and she gives him a mock glare of exasperation.

“WHAT?” Cooper shouts, the loudness causing the sound to go staticky for a moment. All three kids chatter over each other, their voices conjoining into an excited clamor.

“We can talk about it more when we get home,” Natasha says.

“But—”

“Are you bringing Gamora with you?” Lila wants to know.

“We’ll see. She might need some time to recover after the Soul World, so it’ll be up to her,” she says. “We’ll see you soon, though, okay?”

“Be safe,” Laura tells them. “Love you both.”

“We love you too,” Clint says.

“Bye, Dad, bye Auntie Nat!”

“Bye!”

“Bye! Say hi to Gamora for us!”

The line disconnects, and Natasha punches Clint lightly in the arm. “You didn’t have to tell them.”

“Own it, Nat,” Clint tells her, rising and opening one of her drawers and pulling out a couple power bars. She’s not surprised he didn’t even have to search for where she keeps them; they know each other too well. He tosses one to her, and she catches it in midair, slitting the silvery foil wrapper with her nail as he sits back down. “So?”

Natasha takes a bite. She’s not really hungry, not this soon after a battle, but they’re heading out soon and refueling is important. “So what?”

“So what did it feel like?” Clint asks, sounding almost wistful.

“Are you really asking me that?” Natasha says, one eyebrow raised. “Go get Thor, ask to borrow it, find out for yourself.”

“I wouldn’t—Natasha—I’m not worthy. I tried it back at Avengers Tower right before Ultron, remember? No cigar.”

“And was that before or after you tried to throw yourself off a cliff to save half the universe?” Natasha asked, amused. “You tried to do the sacrifice play, same as me, Clint. You were just a little bit—”

“Don’t say it.”

“Slow,” Natasha grins. “In your old age.”

“Shut up.”

She gives him a little nudge when he doesn’t say anything else, the smile slowly fading from his face. “So? Go find out, if you really want to know.”

He shook his head. “I’m not you, Natasha. I mean…to the universe, I’m also the guy who sacrificed his best friend off a cliff.”

“I jumped.”

“I didn’t stop you.”

“You tried.”

“Still,” Clint says, avoiding her gaze. “Just drop it, Natasha, okay?”

“All right,” she says, knowing she will not be able to talk him out of whatever guilt he still feels over that day on the mountaintop. She thinks back to holding the hammer, trying to figure out what to tell him about feeling _powerful_. _Limitless_. “It was…godly.”

Clint stares at her, then barks out a laugh. “That is the worst, _least useful_ description ever.”

“Mm. Think maximum stamina, being able to lift things effortlessly that you know are too heavy. Boundless energy.”

“And the lightning?”

Natasha cracks a smile. “Well, that’s—” A knock sounds at the door, and she leaps up to open it, finding Quill on the other side.

“Sorry,” Quill says. “I know it’s only been half an hour—”

“Twenty minutes,” Clint says with a glance at his watch.

“It’s fine,” Natasha tells him. “Get Tony’s suit from Mantis and the extra Pym particles. We’ll meet you down there in a minute.”

“There’s only enough for two people, roundtrip.”

Clint pales, and Natasha’s teeth snap together tightly. “I know.”

Quill’s grip on the Stone he’s still holding in his left hand tightens. “I have to be one of them. I have to.”

“I know.”

“ _Natasha_ ,” Clint says. “You didn’t say—” His face is ashen, crushed. “Alone, to Vormir?”

“I won’t be alone,” Natasha tells him. She holds out her hand. “The Stone. Please.”

A muscle works in Quill’s jaw before he manages to hold it out, dropping it in Natasha’s open palm. It’s warm, she thinks, vaguely surprised, before—

The Soul World spirals out before her, Clint and Peter gone in an instant. Waves of tall, golden grass tickle her calves, everything bathed in orange light. Their hut is just ahead of her, maybe a hundred feet away, the vegetable patch next to it and flowing with leafy greens. It takes only a moment to orient herself, knowing this place as intimately as she does, having lived there for three months or five hundred lifetimes. “Gamora!” Natasha shouts, beginning to run. The grass tramples under her pounding feet as her eyes search for her. She bursts into the house, reed-door swinging wildly behind her, then into the bedroom, similarly empty. “Gamora!”

The orange fades as quickly as it had come, replaced by the stark white-gray of the Compound. Her knees twinge and burn against the stone floor, telling her that she fell, hard. “Natasha!” Clint crouches next to her, his face pale. He pulls her into his arms. “I thought—”

“I’m okay,” Natasha murmurs, still trying to process what she had seen. “I’m okay.”

“For a second—I thought it was taking you again.”

“No, I just…” She swallowed, then pushed herself to her feet, bringing Clint up with her. Her eyes meet Quill’s, deathly serious. “We need to leave. Now.”

“What did you see?” Quill breathes. “ _What did you see?!_ ”

“It probably doesn’t mean anything,” Natasha says, beginning to fast-walk down the hallway. “She wasn’t there, but it doesn’t mean anything. She could be out gathering, or exploring, like we used to do… It’s probably nothing.” Her fast-walk turns into a jog, Quill at her side and Clint a step behind. Her hand squeezes the Stone in her palm, warm as if headed from an invisible fire in the center, and Quill peels off to get Mantis’s suit while she grabs the Pym particles. She bounds up the steps to the Quantum Tunnel platform.

“Natasha,” Clint says from below, a pained expression on his face.

“I’m sorry, Clint,” she says. “It has to be this way.”

“Promise me,” he says in a low voice. “Promise me it won’t be like last time.”

“I promise. I don’t love Quill and he doesn’t love me. No one’s getting thrown off any cliffs.”

He mounts the steps, grabbing her gloved hand between his bare ones. “Promise me if the Red Skull wants a different exchange, you’re still coming home to my kids.”

Quill comes sprinting back into the room, lugging the spare suit behind him. Natasha nods, focusing on Clint. “Love is for children,” she tells him, “but I owe you a debt.”

He gives her a grimacing smile, pressing her fingers against his lips. “You don’t owe me anything.” He steps back, releasing her, as Quill joins her on the ramp.

“Same coordinates,” Natasha says, bringing up her own Time-Space GPS. “Different timestamp. 22:00:12.30.2023.”

“Locked in,” Quill confirms, his face set with determination. He presses his activation button before she even has time to give the order, and Natasha slips the Soul Stone into the zippered pocket of her suit for safekeeping.

She meets Clint’s eyes as she presses her own. “I’ll be back. I promise.”

* * *

For the second time that day, her feet impact Vormir, creating splashes of water around her, though her suit is still too soaked-through to notice them. Quill looks toward the mountains, then holds his arms out to Natasha, who wrap her own around his middle and holds on tight. On second thought, she probably should have borrowed another aero rig before they left.

Her teeth grit together as her stomach drops out from under her as his pack activates, shooting them up into the sky. Chill wind whips through her half-braided hair, and she ignores the burn in her muscles as she holds on for dear life, though she sort of trusts Quill not to let her freefall into some rocks. Especially since she’s carrying the Soul Stone.

She senses his angle shift, the stars reorienting above her, and then solid stone impacts her feet, sending small spasms of pain up her ankles that she quickly shakes off. She nods at Quill to tell him she’s good, then turns to the path upward, trekking the last few feet up the mountain.

The clifftop looks exactly as she remembers it as she mounts the last step, the space opening up before them. Snow swirls across it, blowing across the geometric shapes carved into its floor, the two spires on either side. She can point to the exact spot where she and Steve appeared when he bargained her back, the rock she and Clint sat on as they debated their future. And there, in the exact place she and Clint had pressed their foreheads together and said their goodbyes, billows the Red Skull.

“Peter, son of Meredith,” the Skull says, floating towards them. His mutilated face turns to her. “…Natasha…daughter of Ivan,” he says, but his grating voice is different somehow, lilting upward at the end. “…You were not supposed to return.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoops, another cliffhanger?? 
> 
> ;)


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Natasha, daughter of Ivan…you were not supposed to return.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For [sadtunes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sadtunes/pseuds/sadtunes).
> 
> Happy birthday, Vi! This chapter would not exist without you (or be as angsty!) so I hope you like it :) You are an amazing, talented human and I am so glad I ruined your life by introducing you to Tumblr so we could become friends. I hope you have a wonderful rest of your birthday because you very much deserve it!!!! ily 💜
> 
> TWs: suicide/suicidal thoughts

“Well, I _have_ returned,” Natasha says, voice clipped and unyielding as she can make it.

“For what purpose?” the Skull asks, floating closer.

She holds up the Stone, glowing with a warm orange nimbus in her palm. “An exchange. A soul for a soul.”

The Red Skull rears backward, eyebrow ridges smashed together above wary, sunken eyes. “That is not…possible.”

“A soul for a soul,” Natasha repeats, lifting it higher, letting the faint orange glow cast over everything on the mountaintop.

The Red Skull’s voice grates. “The Soul Stone is here. I am its Guardian. That there is another is…impossible.”

“You’ve said that already,” Quill points out helpfully. “We want Gamora back. Now.”

The Red Skull stares at her. “Where did you get this?”

“Doesn’t matter,” Natasha replies. “Your job is to protect the Stone, right? Well, here it is.” She thinks back to what Steve said.

_“And if you’re returning the Stone, the exchange is no longer ‘everlasting.’ And the Guide—Red Skull—Schmidt—agreed?”_

_“He didn’t have much of a choice.”_

She goes out on a limb. “I have the Stone. Your job is to Guard the Stone. You have a soul we want back. You must accept the exchange.”

“You do not know of what you speak, Natasha, daughter of Ivan,” the Skull growls. The snarled words hang in the air a moment. “Nevertheless…you are correct.”

A wave of relief washes through her. The Stone jerks in her hand, tugged by some unseen force, and for a moment Natasha’s fingers close around it, fighting against whatever power thinks to take it from her. The Stone is everything they fought for, and her only hope of rescuing Gamora from this hell. But after a tense moment of panic shooting through her muscles, she realizes this is what is supposed to happen and opens her palm. The Stone flies upward in a glittering golden nimbus, hovering before the face of the Skull before winking out of sight.

For a single, terrifying moment, nothing happens. Then phantom water laps at her feet as the entire world ripples, the dark purple sky and snow of Vormir washed away and replaced with another vista Natasha recognizes—the four-pillared archway, everything cast in a hazy reddish tint—the place Steve had first appeared in her dreams to take her away.

Which means…

Which means Gamora should be here somewhere.

Natasha spins around, water splashing her boots at the sudden movement, but there is nothing else here but the archway under which she stands, no one else materializing as she herself had. “Where is she?” she yells up at the sky, almost expecting her voice to echo in the cavernous emptiness above her.

The Skull’s voice is slow in returning, sounding almost consternated. “She is…resisting.”

“What do you mean, _resisting_ ,” Natasha demands. “Either bring her here, or let me go get her!”

There is a moment of silence. Then: “As you wish.”

* * *

The wind rustles through the grasses, but Gamora, head tilted backward and long black-magenta hair falling in waves toward the ground, does not hear them. Her sword dangles at her side, held not in a warrior’s sturdy grip but loosely, point buffeted by the blades waving in the faint breeze. Though this world is bright, it is a brightness not from a star or any singular point. It is a brightness that surrounds, that provides no immediate warmth. On Zen-Whoberi, she and her mother used to greet the mornings like this, their heads tilted back to greet the first rays of the rising sun, before her mother would take her by the hand and lead her back into their home and sing the soft songs of their people while she drew a _yakutsk_ -bristle brush through her hair and braided the purple strands. The notes of her voice would meld with the low drone of the morning beetles, the whispers of the wind through the trees that blanketed her homeworld. Here, there is no sun, no bugs, no other living thing. Even the plants are phantoms of themselves, growing and changing but not _real_.

Here, there is nothing.

After a few long moments, Gamora shifts, bringing her head forward to its normal resting position and opening her eyes. The pit lies before her, a swirling mass of blackness, a whirlpool from which she will never emerge should she choose to submerge herself in its inky depths. She wonders, as she has wondered every day she has come here, what it would feel like to do so. Whether the blackness would sweep up to claim her, or drag her to the bottom, whether she would dematerialize upon its touch to her skin or whether she would drown within it, incorporeal fluid filling up lungs she no longer requires. There are so many different ways it could happen; she has seen enough strange things on enough strange worlds to know this—pricks of light like Peter’s _fireflies_ that turn carnivorous on a full moon, pillars of mottled stone that become like an ocean to swallow you whole, a planet that sustains the life force of a god.

All it would take is a single step. Tilting forward, surrendering to its pull, losing her balance…

_Perfectly balanced. As all things should be._

It would be so easy to just jump.

It’s not like Natasha is likely to return, anyway. She knows that in her bones, has known it a little more each day that passes, countless in number now since the other woman was rescued. And she does not resent her that in the slightest. She knows of Clint, of Laura, of little Nathaniel and of Cooper and Lila, not so little anymore. She knows of Steve, and of Wanda, of Yelena and Maria Hill and Phil Coulson and Melinda May and a dozen others Natasha spoke of in the dark quietness of their bedroom with fondness. She knows they will be glad to have her back, will rejoice in her presence, because she has come to know Natasha and knows her well enough to know that Natasha is one that will have been missed, deeply, by all who knew her.

_“I will come back for you. I’ll find a way to get you out too. I promise.”_

The days stretch long, the indistinguishable nights longer, and Natasha does not return. She also knows her well enough to know that Natasha is not one who breaks a promise such as this, but for her sake, Gamora hopes, eventually, she does. She is all too aware how hopeless of a proposition it is, how if the Stones are destroyed then _time_ will have to be the key, how impossible it is that Natasha will fight her father and win. Thanos is powerful, the epitome of “monsters and magic _and aliens_ and nothing were ever trained for” as Natasha once told her with a strange, nostalgic expression on her face. Natasha will try, and they will lose, because he is Thanos, wielder of more Infinity Stones than any being before him, and hopefully she will not risk allowing him to win again for the sake of Gamora. And then, hopefully, Natasha will move on, and live the life that Gamora had taken from her that day on the snowy cliff, her captor’s hand clamped around her upper arm.

She takes in a shuddering breath, reminding herself to breathe. The pit is closer now, her toes lined up against the edge. Gamora forces that train of thought to stop, forces herself to dredge up some small amount of hope within her, something to stay herself from taking that one step. She can feel the pit calling to her, a whisper against her brain, trying to drag her to elsewhere, but she bares her teeth against it, a flash of white against the green of her skin and the orange glow of the Soul World. She can survive one more day, has survived so many others just like this, she can give Natasha her faith and trust or whatever scraps are left of it in her fevered mind for one more day. The pull gets stronger, but Gamora battles it back, fighting it with her last iotas of mental strength and fortitude.

But what use is fighting? All Gamora has ever done in her life is _fought_ , ever since that fateful day as a child when Thanos placed the first of many instruments of destruction on her finger and swept her away from her homeworld. She has fought with him, and she has fought against him, and she has fought many others besides—his enemies and his allies, when they needed reminding of the Mad Titan’s wrath and temperament, rogues, smugglers, and traders, entire governments, marks, assassins, military generals, slavers, battery-sucking tentacled monsters, a celestial-slash-planet. Gamora has fought to win, and she has fought to _survive_ , and now she wonders the good of doing either, when existence leaves nothing for her but false hope. What is that, fleeting as a _armiff_ ’s wing, against the sweet release of death?

Her entire life has been pain. Though they are not the memories she chooses to recall when she thinks of her mother or Zen-Whoberi, she also remembers the cold nights and the burn of hunger in her stomach and long days searching for scraps. Under Thanos, there were multitudes of pain—of watching her people be slaughtered, of the training and the sparring, of the matches with Nebula, of the implants and the matches again—though she had never been torn apart and replaced like her sister, she had been torn apart in other ways, hearing her screams, watching as she slowly turned to hate her—of killing and killing and killing again, until her skin was more red than green, and kneeling before him with the blood of her victims puddled on the ground. Even once she had escaped him, turned her back on his cult and his mission and his genocide, there was still killing—for money, for information, for survival. And then there was the pain of recovery, of piecing herself back together from the scraps Thanos had left behind, from the scraps she herself had protected from him with submissive gestures and followed orders and striving for perfection covering a ferocity buried so deep at times she forgot it existed. The pain of Quill-turned-Peter, and wondering if she had lost too much of herself under bodies and blood and burned civilizations to be loved, and to return his love with her own. The pain of their final goodbyes, the hurt and desperation in his eyes as the bubbles floated uselessly between them.

And in the beyond… Gamora closes her eyes again, her mother’s voice crooning low and gentle in her ear. She doesn’t know much of her own culture, what little she knew of it before being taken vanishing over the years and replaced with tactics and star charts and more efficient ways to slaughter, and she never thought to look into it after she escaped, never wanted to revisit those precious memories she had left and find them tainted by misremembrance. But from what she does remember, the Zehoberei did believe in an afterlife, or at least the sect of them she and her mother belonged to did… Bodies feeding soil, feeding plants, feeding animals, feeding their people, while their minds joined the stars in the beyond… There was no pain, she knew that much. Her culture was not one to believe in a hell, as Peter would have put it, although if one did exist then Gamora might well belong there, Guardian of the Galaxy or not. What was it Natasha had said, fresh from one of her nightmares about scepters and glowing blue eyes and Clint, always Clint? _“Your ledger is dripping, gushing…Can you really wipe out that much red?”_

Gamora does not know what she herself believes, but she supposes that if there _is_ something in the great beyond, her belief in it or lack thereof has no bearing on its existence. There is only the choice.

There is only forward.

Her lungs inflate, another breath she no longer quite needs, but is comforting, nonetheless, to have. One step. One step to no more fighting. To no more pain.

She can almost hear Natasha shouting her name in the distance, and she wonders how far her mind is really gone, but it gives her pause anyway. One more day—

She can survive anything for one more day, and has before.

“ _Gamora!_ ” The call is closer now, and maybe she is not imagining it? But it’s not possible, it’s not—her mind is playing tricks on her, the years of isolation taking their toll—she hears what she desperately wants to hear—

Her eyes open just in time to see Natasha barreling toward her in a blur of burnished copper hair. She impacts her shoulder barely a moment later, a brutal tackle that sends them both flying and then sprawling across the dirt, but all Gamora can think is how _warm_ and _solid_ and _alive_ Natasha feels compared to everything else around her, and before they’ve even come to a stop, she knows. _She’s not alone._

Natasha lands on top, her knees planted on either side of Gamora’s waist in what Gamora immediately identifies as a professional pin, the distribution of body weight making it almost impossible for her to get up except for the small factor of Gamora’s enhanced Zehoberei strength versus the Terran. “Gamora,” Natasha says again, anguish and relief all bundled up in that one sound, in her name, and Gamora can’t help but smile at the sound of it again after all this time. Of a voice, besides her own. Of someone, besides her.

Doubt flickers in her mind—not of Natasha, Natasha is real, of that she is convinced—but of how and why she is here. “Did—did you do it?” In the Soul World, her voice is not hoarse from disuse, but it feels like it should be, feels like it has been eons since she has last spoken to her in their bed, safely ensconced in their little hut.

“Yes,” Natasha says, a smile breaking over her face. Her tone softens to something gentler. “I promised I’d return.”

Gamora’s eyes flick up to meet hers. “I wanted to believe you.”

Natasha rolls off of her, standing and offering her her hand, silhouetted against the orange sky with the escaped tendrils of her hair blowing in the breeze. “Then let’s get out of here.”

After a moment, Gamora reaches up and takes it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Any and all feedback appreciated <3
> 
> Anyone else got a birthday coming up so I can be forced to write chapter 14? ;)


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Reunions abound.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For [MayBeBrilliant](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MayBeBrilliant) and [the9muses](https://archiveofourown.org/users/the9muses). 
> 
> Happy birthday, May and Q! I adore you both and wrestled my muse into submission to write this final chapter for you, so I hope your respective days are/were amazing and that you enjoy this last installment of this fic <3
> 
> Additionally, this chapter would not have existed (well, at least not this quickly) without the combined efforts and support of Vi, for putting up with my teasing about making this fic endgame Clintasha (dw I didn’t), and Fen, for the FUCKING AMAZING fan art featured in the end note, so more on that later. 
> 
> Also, Unpaid_Devushka, don't think I've forgotten you - you were on my mind throughout writing this and your constant support throughout this fic has meant more to me than you know! I hope you're doing well too <3

The air is cold on the mountaintop as she comes back to her body, knowing from her stiff muscles she has been standing here for who-knows-how-long. “Natasha?” Quill asks, fear in his voice, and she glances down to where her hand is still outstretched. But the dust is already coalescing between them, dark particles appearing out of thin air and becoming solid until Gamora is in front of her, hand still grasped in Natasha’s. She freezes for a moment, black eyes wide, and Natasha notices her clench from the sudden cold, after so long in the perpetual warmth. Her gaze darts to the cliff, to the mountain, to the white ring in the sky before her arms are around Natasha, hugging her with alien strength.

“We made it,” Natasha whispers in her ear. “You’re safe. We both are.”

“Your hair,” Gamora says, finally pulling back. “It’s more red out here.”

She blinks, then smiles. “And you have snow in yours.”

Gamora looks down immediately, lifting a few strands of it and gazing at the tiny crystalline flakes in wonder. Natasha releases her hand, stepping back, and the other woman looks up at her with a sudden flash of fear quickly covered by a cooling of her features, as if relearning how to wear the mask they put on for the outside world. Natasha nods to behind her, and Gamora slowly turns, hand dropping her hair and falling to the side.

“Gamora?” Quill whispers, his voice cracking on the first syllable of her name.

“Peter?” One evergreen hand reaches for his face, cups his cheek, as if trying to decide if he’s real, or purely a figment of her imagination. A second hand joins the first, her thumbs against his cheeks, and Quill chokes on air, his eyes filling with tears that begin to cascade, unstoppable, down toward his chin. In one trembling motion, she pulls him toward her, pressing her forehead against his, and his arms wrap around her waist, hugging her to him. It’s more intimate than any kiss could be, and Natasha almost wants to give them some privacy, but they’re still on Vormir, and there’s nowhere to go. She settles for glaring at the ethereal Red Skull instead, where he also floats watching this exchange.

“Thank you for doing what you promised,” she hears Gamora say quietly, hard as she is trying to ignore it. Some spy instincts never fade. “I know what it cost you, Peter.”

“I thought I lost you forever,” he replies hoarsely. “I thought…I would have done anything to get you back, ‘mora.” She can hear the slight, watery smile he breaks into in his voice. “Dance-off with the floaty guy over there, even though he doesn’t really have legs. Whatever it took.”

“You did everything right,” Gamora tells him.

“Well, I love you more than anything,” he whispers.

* * *

After Gamora puts on the suit and her own Time-Space GPS, the three of them hit the button to return them to their own space and time, sucked downward into the Quantum Realm with the Guide still billowing silently above them. Moments later, they rematerialize on the platform in the Avengers Compound for the final time. Natasha can’t wait to strip off this goddamn suit and never deal with time travel again, but first—

Clint crashes into her after taking the steps two at a time, hugging her with everything he has. “No complications,” she murmurs into his ear, returning the gesture without reservation.

“Good to hear it, Romanoff.”

A few feet away, Gamora stops abruptly at the edge of the stairs, and Natasha watches as she gazes down at Nebula, who stares silently up at her. A muscle twitches in the small part of the blue alien’s rounded jaw that has not been replaced with an augment. Clint’s arms still tight around her and hers around him, Natasha wonders what Nebula will say. They have only talked briefly about it in the intervening five years after the Snap, as Nebula is about as verbose as Clint is stoic about random puppies he finds online, but between Nebula and Gamora it is enough to know the general color of their relationship, the broad strokes of _rivalry_ and _betrayal_ and _survival_ and _complicated childhood_.

Natasha knows a little too much about that herself, growing up in the Red Room.

“I am glad you are not dead, sister,” Nebula utters finally, in her usual harsh, low tones. With that said, she immediately turns and stalks away out the doors to another section of the Compound.

“What, that’s it?” Quill calls after her. “She told him where the Stone was for _you_ , you big blue—”

Gamora silences him with a touch of her fingers to his arm, his eyes returning to her immediately and his expression softening as he practically drinks her in. “It’s all right, Peter.”

The others greet her then, Rocket and Groot and Mantis and Drax and even Thor, who Natasha’s fairly certain has only met Gamora once but engulfs her in a giant bear hug anyway. Watching the Guardians of the Galaxy reunite is amusing, given their eclectic personalities, penchant for chaos, and the fact that most of them would rather die than do something that could be remotely described as touchy-feely, but even so she can sense the relief and wonder and joy at having her back encapsulated in their faces. Still, as the minutes tick past she catches the veiled look of panic in Gamora’s eyes, the way she backs up slightly though remains clinging to Quill’s hand, and Natasha steps forward. “Okay, okay, give her some space, guys; she just got back.”

It’s a testament to their newfound respect for her that they all shuffle backward a few paces, and the glance and shaky breath Gamora draws are grateful. Her free hand twitches toward the red-and-silver knife belted at her waist, and Natasha feels a slight chill down her spine.

“We think it might be a good idea for you to stay at the Farmhouse for a bit as a quieter place to acclimate, if you want to come,” Natasha says, and Clint nods beside her. “Both of you.” Quill’s brow furrows, obviously having expected to go straight back into space and their home on the Benatar, but he looks to Gamora, whose gaze has returned to the floor. “It’s like I told you—Clint’s place. His wife, Laura, their three kids, but it’s…peaceful. You could stay as long as you want, until you’re ready to leave.” She falls silent, waiting for their answer, her concerns cementing as the seconds tick by. She doesn’t want Gamora to go, not yet, and doesn’t even think it’s a good idea beyond any selfish desire to keep the woman who was her entire world for nearly three months close. If she declines, then Natasha will take Quill aside and tell him what to watch for, because she knows these things don’t leave easily just as soon as they’re over, that they imprint like scars.

“I…think I would like that. I’ve heard a lot about them,” Gamora says softly, meeting Natasha’s gaze. “Thank you.” Her eyes slide to Clint. “Thank you both.”

“Yeah.” Quill finally tears his eyes away from Gamora and nods, the words hoarse. “Yeah, that’s what we’ll do. Thanks. For the, uh, hospitality,” he says, a hint of the Missouri kid from his past slipping through. 

“Of course,” Clint replies before turning to the rest of the Guardians. “We don’t have enough rooms for you all—”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Rocket waves a tiny paw, tone the most respectful she’s ever heard from him despite the words coming out of his mouth. Even Groot’s video game is nowhere to be seen. He nods toward the door Nebula disappeared through. “You go. We’ll keep an eye on the Blue Meanie.”

“Rocket…” Natasha says.

“What, I say it with fondness!” the raccoon replies.

“Then it’s settled,” Natasha says, turning back to their soon-to-be houseguests. “Benatar, half an hour? We need to call Laura and I want to get Vormir out of my hair—Quill, maybe help Gamora freshen up? Or maybe get her something to eat, it’s been—” Her mouth quirks, though she watches Gamora intently. “—five years.”

“I’m not hungry,” Gamora says quietly, and concern niggles at her again, but there is nothing to do but wait and see. “But I would like to…wash.”

Plan decided, they disperse, Natasha pulling out her cell phone as she and Clint head for her room. Her call is answered on the second ring right as they enter it, a breathless, “Natasha?” on the other end.

“Okay if we bring home two more?” Natasha asks, sharing a smile with Clint as she tucks the phone between her ear and her shoulder and begins shedding the bottom half of the thick Quantum suit.

“The—” Laura makes a happy, choked laughing sound. “The kids will be delighted, Nat.”

“Well, let ‘em know,” Natasha says with a smile. “Clint’ll text you the arrival details. See you soon, Laur.”

She ends the call and tosses the phone on the unmade bed, divesting herself of the rest of the bulky suit before heading into the shower. It is not nearly the quickest of her life but close to it as she scrubs the melted snow out of her hair and lathers down the rest of her body, but she emerges less than six minutes later with a towel wrapped around her, hunting through her drawers for underwear, a new bra, and a matching pair of socks, because between Clint and Tony she has far too many pizza, dog, bird, spider, or robot-related ones mixed in with her usual black. Once she’s dressed, she and Clint head for the front of the Compound where the Benatar is parked.

They bump into Thor along the way, who instead of stepping aside to let them pass instead plants himself in front of them, gazing at Natasha with some kind of urgency. “Lady Natasha, I needs must converse with you on a certain matter.”

“Of course, Thor,” Natasha says, stopping and looking at him expectantly.

When Thor is not forthcoming, Clint takes the cue and edges past. “I’ll go…prep the spaceship,” he says, the awkwardness quickly giving way to a dopey grin as his lips form the word _spaceship_. 

“You’re never getting over that, are you?” Natasha calls after him, amused.

“Nope, once we’re all done here and the world stops trying to end itself for two seconds, I am going to have a massive nerd-out,” Clint replies, turning around to walk backwards. For the ex-carnie, it looks as natural as walking forwards. “Maybe even Coulson-level, we’ll see.”

“As long as it doesn’t involve you in a spangly outfit…” Natasha says. “There are some things I can’t unsee.”

“Aw, Nat,” he calls from the end of the hall before disappearing out into the sunshine, “you know you’ve seen me in worse!”

“That is…unfortunately true,” she sighs, before turning back to Thor. “Sorry, Thor, what was it you wanted to speak to me about?”

“Ah, yes.” Thor returns his attention to her, the amusement on his face from watching their exchange rapidly replaced once more with solemnity. “You wielded Mjolnir.”

“Oh. Yeah. Um…sorry about that?” Natasha offers. “I wasn’t trying to take it from you, or anything…”

“Yes, I just got it back, so thank you. But it’s not…” Thor closes his mouth, then tries again. “I must inform you that the hammer has deemed you worthy.”

“Thanks?”

“And that you have thus been made _heiðursdrottning_ , Queen Emeritus of Asgard, Protector of the Nine Realms.”

“Wait. _What_?”

“I must know your intentions. Do you seek to rule?”

“No,” Natasha says quickly. She stares at him, still not quite believing this is happening. Any other person—ahem, Tony—and she might think this is part of some elaborate joke, but Thor appears, well, grave.

“Excellent. Well then. Just know that you have been accorded all the rights and titles of an Asgardian of your station, etcetera, etcetera—the right to visit New Asgard whenever you so wish, to call a feast in our hall—”

“So…you’ve granted me a galactic passport…?”

“—to command the army of Asgard against foes big and small, and to enter the eternal realm of Valhalla when you die.”

“Valhalla,” she repeats.

“I’ll have Brunnhilde send you some scrolls,” Thor says with a smile, clapping her on the shoulder hard enough to make her stumble slightly.

“I don’t—I don’t want Valhalla,” Natasha says. “I’ve had enough eternity for a lifetime.”

“Yes, well, no choice—it’s wonderful, there’s feasting, games of slaying giant beasts, you’ll get to meet my father, Odin, my mother, Frigga—”

“So it’s a bit more than a passport,” Natasha surmises.

“Mm, yes. Quite.”

“And…no offense, but you can’t revoke it?”

Thor shakes his head. “No. No, not really. The All-Father made the rules when he banished me to Earth the first time—whosoever holds this hammer, if he be worthy, shall possess the power—that sort of thing.”

“…Right,” Natasha sighs. “Well…thanks for letting me know.”

Thor claps her on the back again, giving her another jovial smile, and Natasha Romanoff, Queen Emeritus of Asgard, exits out into the sunshine.

“What was that about?” Clint asks her, waiting just beyond the doors. Unable to quite process it yet, Natasha just shakes her head.

“Oh, just…the Norse afterlife. Problem for when I die, I guess.”

“Don’t even…” Clint grumbles.

Natasha socks him lightly on the arm. “Come on, birdbrain. Let’s go home.”

* * *

The Barton Farmhouse is all smiles.

The kids hang off her and Clint, as they usually do when they come home from a mission—Lila asking where they’ve been and what they saw and Cooper wanting to know if they were hurt and Nate in it for the “cool stories, dad, you’re a superhero, come on!”—but for less time than usual, what with the _actual spaceship that’s just landed a hundred feet from their house_.

“Auntie Nat, you’ve flown in that?!”

“How fast does it go?”

“Can you go upside-down?”

“How many other planets are there?”

“Do they have cows in space?”

“The colors are awesome!”

“Thanks, little man,” Quill says, emerging from the exterior ramp. Nathaniel takes an uncertain step backward, eyes wide, but is bolstered by an encouraging nod from his father.

“Are you Star-Lord?” Nate asks in an awed voice, and Quill breaks into a broad smile.

“The one and only.” He glances back, his hand reaching, and Gamora appears from behind him, her steps down the ramp slow and measured. “And this is Gamora.”

“Whoa…” Nate breathes. Gamora emerges onto the grass with her fingers still laced with Peter’s, the facial implants glinting silver and the tips of hair backlit to glow a reddish-purple. Godslayer is belted as always on her hip, and Natasha wonders how long it will take the kids to notice that, and how much longer before they feel bold enough to ask to see or hold it. The mental image of all three Barton children chasing each other around the barn with the sword causes her to suppress a smile; normally such a thing might be a cause for concern, but these were, after all, the same children who broke into Clint’s safe and held pretend war games with his military-grade bows at ages thirteen, eleven, and four respectively.

Inheriting Laura’s stubbornness streak and Clint’s propensity for not dying despite the stupid shit he gets into will probably serve them well in the future. 

It is Lila who approaches Gamora first, slowly and cautiously like Natasha warned them on the phone. “Your hair is so pretty,” she tells her with a delighted look. Natasha smiles; Lila cannot possibly know the significance of hair in Zehoberei culture but she always seems to know the right thing to say anyhow to draw someone out of their shell.

“Thank you,” Gamora says, gazing at her warmly. Her voice is soft and assured, if quieter and more pensive than normal.

“Can we see your sword?” Cooper wants to know. Clint catches her eye, amused, and Natasha mimes looking down at a non-existent watch. Eighteen-point-five seconds.

“Cooper,” Laura reminds him.

“Sorry,” the teen says, slightly abashed. “Welcome to our house, Mr. Quill, Ms. Gamora; we’re really happy to have you! We’re having french onion soup tonight, but just let my mom know if you’re allergic to anything or want something else.” Cooper pauses. “Can we please see your sword?”

“Dinner sounds lovely.” After a glance at Natasha for confirmation, she draws the sword, holding it aloft where it flashes in the light before handing it to Cooper. “Its name is Godslayer.”

“ _Cool_ ,” he breathes, eyes traveling the length of the long, thin blade, metal forged to kill. A thousand souls are probably lost on that blade since Gamora has owned it, perhaps more. Cooper looks up eagerly. “Can I—”

Gamora nods, laughter faint on her lips and the column of her throat, and Cooper takes off immediately, Lila hot on his heels. “Not in the house!” Laura calls after them.

“Yeah, Mom!”

“And not you, Nate!”

“Aw, Mama…” the youngest Barton child stops running, sounding so much like Clint in that moment that Natasha barely holds in her laugh.

“Sorry, kiddo.”

“I’ll show you to your room,” Clint offers Quill and Gamora, scooping Nate up and allowing his arms to sling around his neck. He’s not really little enough for it anymore, but Clint has the upper body strength and an arrow to the eye socket for anyone who suggests his youngest—and last—child is too old to be carried like a monkey anymore. “And I promise you will get that sword back eventually, if maybe a little worse for wear.”

“If they can manage to harm the metal, I shall be very impressed,” Gamora tells him. “It is of finest make; the one who called himself my father made sure of it.”

Clint smiles regardless of the illusion to Thanos, or maybe it is because Thanos is dead twice over, slain by their hands, and Natasha is returned that the Titan’s shadow looms less large. “Well, you haven’t met my kids.” At his nod toward the porch, the four of them head into the house together, Clint knees-deep in the harrowing tale of Cooper’s ninth birthday by the time the door closes behind them.

“I assume you’re keeping me out here for a reason?” Natasha asks once everything has gone silent save for the faint braying of the animals. She turns, giving Laura a warm if sly look, gaze falling to give the hand Laura currently has wrapped around her wrist. Laura rolls her eyes, pulling Natasha in for a hug. She closes her eyes as she rests her chin on the other woman’s shoulder, breathing in the familiar scent of flour and earth and fresh linens and Iowa in late summer. “What’s this for,” she murmurs into her ear.

“You are the most ridiculously non-self-absorbed person I have ever met,” Laura tells her as she pulls away. “Well, you and Clint.” Laura affixes her with a stern glare, the kind that hasn’t worked on Lila since she was two. “You’re back; you’re not allowed to leave for a good long while.”

“Never even crossed my mind,” Natasha promises truthfully.

“Good,” Laura says, visibly relaxing. “The kids will be happy. Even happier than hearing you were bringing home two Guardians of the Galaxy, one of whom is an alien.”

“What can I say, they’re easy to please,” Natasha laughs. “Although what am I going to do to top this for Lila’s birthday in September—” The rest of the sentence doesn’t need to be said to get the sentiment across. She nudges Laura’s shoulder playfully with her own. “ _Only_ the kids will be happy?”

“Well. I didn’t say that.”

“No,” Natasha agrees.

“Definitely not.”

For a moment, they just grin at each other.

“Oh, and we’re repainting your bedroom.”

“What?” Natasha says, suddenly taken aback. “But I _like_ the green.” Laura shrugs, her mouth pulled upward at the corner and her eyes dancing. The truth bursts over Natasha like stepping into a patch of sunlight, or the rush of warm blue-green water over her toes in the Seychelles. “Well, I guess I’ll just have to sleep somewhere else, then.”

“The guest bedroom is taken, unfortunately,” Laura tells her.

“The couch?” Natasha suggests innocently.

“Broken.”

“Broken?”

“Mmhmm.”

Natasha sighs, long and exaggerated. “Guess I’ll have to get a hotel then.”

Laura laughs. “Nice try, Nat.”

“So how long will it take this _paint_ to dry?”

“Oh, several weeks. Maybe more.”

“Right, of course.”

“It’s very special paint.”

“And everyone thinks Clint’s the stubborn one…” Natasha tilts her head back as she laughs. “The lengths you, Laura Barton, will go to get me in your bed…” Linking their arms, she looks sideways at Laura as they begin to make their way up to the house as well, ignoring the loud crashing sounds from the barn they definitely are better off not investigating.“You know you never even had to ask.”

“I know,” Laura says. “That’s why I didn’t.”

* * *

_Several weeks_.

Several weeks: shooting some arrows with Lila and Clint, recounting every last Goose story she can recall for Nate, practicing hand-to-hand with Cooper, sparring with Gamora.

Several weeks: dinners at the Barton’s perpetually unbalanced table, long walks through fields of corn, an afternoon turned two days of spraying each other down with the garden hose when the A/C goes out and Laura lets Clint to try to fix it before calling a real repairperson.

Several weeks: nightmares of snow and ice and bodies hitting stone, of twilight worlds, of everyone gone and turned to dust and ash. Flashbacks at the sound of wind rushing through grasses, warm fingers to ground and to hold and to wipe away tears, pots of tea for sleepless nights.

Several weeks: watching Gamora open up over good food and good people, another soul saved by Natasha or Clint or some other hero, yes, but then again by light and laughter and Laura’s home-cooked meal, or at least starting the process. Watching as slowly, her desperate need to be around people, to not be _alone_ , dissipates, the flash of panic whenever Quill gets up from the table receding.

Several weeks: the kids exploring a real-life spaceship and Quill agreeing to take Cooper out and teach him the basics of non-Earth piloting when Natasha and Gamora need some time alone, Lila braiding Gamora’s hair and Gamora teaching her some Zehoberei styles with hers.

Several weeks: calls with Rocket and the others, managing the Avengers in a part-time and virtual capacity, and knowing there is space to go back if she wants it, whatever that might look like.

 _Several weeks_ , and when they are over, watching Gamora and Peter board the Benatar with waves and promises to visit as they say goodbye. Several weeks, and the kids are still hanging off her and Clint and Laura’s arms as they watch them take off, buffeted from the wind of the ship’s powerful engines. Several weeks, and Natasha still wakes up with Clint’s arms around her middle and Laura’s head nestled in the crook of her shoulder. Several weeks, and Gamora still sends her a video message nearly every day, Rocket exploding something or Drax perfectly still in the background, Peter’s hand clasped in hers just out of frame.

They are home. And slowly, eventually, they will be whole.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bonus:  
>  _"This is Avengers Compound extension 616507, Maria Hill, former Director of Operations at Stark Industries, former Deputy Director of S.H.I.E.L.D., never HYDRA. I am currently unavailable to take your call. You may leave a message after the tone. If it's urgent, please contact your direct supervisor, or the Avengers press department. If you need immediate help, please call 9-1-1 or your local equivalent. As a reminder, the Avengers **are** an emergency response force, but this is not the right line. Thank you for your time. Good day."_  
>  “Maria? Yeah, can you look into getting excommunicated from Valhalla for me? Yeah, that Valhalla. It’s a long story. I’ll give you Brunnhilde’s num—”  
>  _Beeeeeep. "The inbox you are trying to reach is now full."_
> 
> (If you don’t get that joke, I *beg* of you to read the Maria Hill voicemail box series by [zedille](https://archiveofourown.org/users/zedille/pseuds/zedille). It’s hilarious. Trust me.)
> 
> Well, that's a wrap! Thank you all so much for reading and coming on this journey with me! It's been a longer road than I intended, but we got here eventually. Also, the BIGGEST of thanks (with plenty of astounded and speechless adoration piled on for good measure) to [FenTasticallyConfuddled](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FenTasticallyConfuddled) for the amazing fan art for this fic... I've never really had fan art made of my work before so trust me when I say I was absolutely shrieking with delight when you revealed this to me:
> 
> aksjdsjakdhsdhsh I'm still not over it!!! For anyone who wants to view it full size and/or heap praise at him you can do so on [Tumblr](https://fentasticallyconfuddled.tumblr.com/post/640500688243376128/this-i-did-for-aleksandrachaev-to-help) :D


End file.
